book data
832 ratings,
3.61
average rating, 293 reviews
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published
2007
by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
binding
Hardcover, 336 pages
literary awards
John Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize Finalist (2007)
isbn
0374299161
(isbn13: 9780374299163)
description
A daring, spellbinding tale of anthropologists, missionaries, demon possession, sexual taboos, murder, and an obsessed young reporter named Mischa Ber...more
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 1,415)
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5 stars (131)
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4 stars (367)
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3 stars (235)
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2 stars (77)
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1 star (22)
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avg 3.61
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
Read in May, 2008
This was a strange, but intriguing work. The mystery and culture were both elegant and engaging, the characters well drawn and real. However, the author was self indulgent in several ways: most obviously by casting himself as the narrator and most notably by suddenly steering away from the main story to delve into a too-detailed family history that seems like it could have been its own novel--and not one I would have read. In the end, the author reveals that he is himself an anthropologist and t...more
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Read in May, 2008
recommended to Sunni by:
Alicia
This was given to me as an audio download gift from my stepdaughter, an anthropologist. We both listened at the same time. She didn't like it (thought it was too superficial a depiction of the field of anthropology and the reader got on her nerves); but I loved it.
This story had me in its grip on so many levels. First, it is a murder mystery (which I love) and I found it set up and then unraveled in a very interesting way. The reader, through the protaganist, becomes the anthropologi...more
This story had me in its grip on so many levels. First, it is a murder mystery (which I love) and I found it set up and then unraveled in a very interesting way. The reader, through the protaganist, becomes the anthropologi...more
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Read in April, 2008
recommended to Ruth by:
Rodney Clapp
This novel (whose existence I learned of through Rodney's Goodreads, if I'm remembering right) was such a delight. With its thoroughness (e.g., some would say it spends too long on the various generations of the missionary family) it is a bit reminiscent of an anthropological study--appropriate to the story of a mysterious anthropologist-turned-murderer. But it's bursting with wonderful subplots & sensory details & really captures the strangeness of expatriate white Westerners' lives & degrees o...more
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Read in March, 2008
i picked fieldwork by mischa berlinski on the recommendation of my local independent bookseller. (since that’s how i found the history of love, it didn’t even occur to me that i wouldn’t utterly fall for this book too.)
it’s an interesting premise: mischa berlinski (and we could spend the rest of the afternoon discussing the implications of a novelist naming his fictional protagonist after himself), while in thailand with his girlfriend, stumbles on this improbable murder sto...more
it’s an interesting premise: mischa berlinski (and we could spend the rest of the afternoon discussing the implications of a novelist naming his fictional protagonist after himself), while in thailand with his girlfriend, stumbles on this improbable murder sto...more
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Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski is a well-crafted, absorbing novel that fuses travel, anthropology and mystery. In many respects it feels a bit like a Paul Theroux travelogue, albeit Berlinski is far kinder to most of his subjects. And while this is a work of fiction, the main character certainly bears a strong resemblance to the author in more than just name.
How do I know this? I worked with Mischa briefly in 2001. Though our ‘relationship’ can be, at best, characterized as a casu...more
How do I know this? I worked with Mischa briefly in 2001. Though our ‘relationship’ can be, at best, characterized as a casu...more
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Read in May, 2007
recommends it for:
Anyone who likes historical novels
A lot of hard work and research went into this excellent work of historical fiction. It is fiction, as the author reminds us at the end of the book and yet, the characters are so excellently described and brilliant that you could swear that this is a biography. The main character is a dedicated, unselfish, female anthropologist doing work with a tribe of Chinese/Thais in Northern Thailand. We find out early on that she may be involved in a murder and the author painstakingly researches her life ...more
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Read in February, 2008
I liked this book a lot, but it unravels too quickly at the end. I don't find Martiya's final undoing to be very convincing, nor inevitable. A tragic sense of doom should be hanging over her a lot more heavily than it does. Maybe the distance I'm feeling from the plot is due to Mischa Berlinksi's writing style -- he is very fast-moving and detached, like he's afraid to lose the reader's interest. This doesn't leave a lot of time for feeling characters' pain. (Also hard to feel the pain of a char...more
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Read in August, 2008
In a way, this was high-grade guilty reading: travelogue and murder-mystery. The book dragged a bit in the middle and could have benefited from less time drawing out the native encounters of a graduate student and more time teasing out the conclusion. I was disappointed by characters who were all but forgotten in the end, but I think that would have mattered less if the book had maintained a faster clip.
The book was incredibly cinematic, but the payoff in the end was not what it cou...more
The book was incredibly cinematic, but the payoff in the end was not what it cou...more
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01/20/08
Laura
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Read in February, 2008
I honestly don't know how to rate this book. On the sentence level, it's no great shakes, but wow, is it a good story. As an anthropologist, I can't help but enjoy the fictive ethnographic detail, the references to famous and infamous "forefathers" (Malinowski, Pritchard, etc.), to the long, drawn-out saga of fieldwork, with its dislocations and its epiphanies. There's a fascinating way in which the obsessive Curiosity of the anthropologist gets mirrored in the obsessive search for ...more
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Read in March, 2008
recommended to Jill by:
Stephen King & his article "How to Kill a Book" in EWrecommends it for: those crazy folk who enjoy religion and mystery (no--it's NOT "The Da Vinci Code!!")
In order to enjoy "Fieldwork," you must have an interest in world religions and spirituality. A good deal of the book observes the Dialo tribal rituals in Thailand.
I found the book to be interesting, rye and fast-paced. The only part I thought slowed down the book was the background of the Walkers--the missionary family whom Martiya visited and ultimately murdered youngest son David.
My suggestion is to listen to the book. I don't know that I would have caught th...more
I found the book to be interesting, rye and fast-paced. The only part I thought slowed down the book was the background of the Walkers--the missionary family whom Martiya visited and ultimately murdered youngest son David.
My suggestion is to listen to the book. I don't know that I would have caught th...more
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01/16/09
Kathleen
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Read in December, 2007
Fieldwork, by Mischa Berlinski. B-plus. Narrated by William Dufris, produced by Tantor Audio, and downloaded from audible.com.
When his girlfriend takes a job as a schoolteacher in northern Thailand, Mischa Berlinski goes along for the ride, working as little as possible for one
of Thailand's English-language newspapers. One evening a fellow expatriate tips him off to a story. A charismatic American anthropologist, Martiya van
der Leun, is being imprisoned in a Thai prison ...more
When his girlfriend takes a job as a schoolteacher in northern Thailand, Mischa Berlinski goes along for the ride, working as little as possible for one
of Thailand's English-language newspapers. One evening a fellow expatriate tips him off to a story. A charismatic American anthropologist, Martiya van
der Leun, is being imprisoned in a Thai prison ...more
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Read in May, 2009
Fieldwork is the story of a journalist who becomes obsessed with the story of an anthropologist. Both the journalist (who inexplicably has been given the same name as the book's author, Mischa Berlinski) and the anthropologist (Martiya van der Leun) are Americans who have ended up living in Thailand. Martiya went there to do fieldwork as part of her doctoral studies; Mischa went because his girlfriend signed up to teach English there for a year. Early on, we learn that Martiya killed a missionar...more
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02/05/09
Bookmarks Magazine
added it
Mischa Berlinski originally intended to write an account of the real-life Lisu tribe of Thailand, but held scant interest in the project until he decided to fictionalize the natives and turned his research into a novel. In this readable and clever debut, told almost entirely in backstory, Berlinski explores the problems inherent in trying to assume the perspective of another person or culture and the enduring conflict between faith and science. While he treats each perspective with genuine empat
...more
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Read in June, 2009
I didn't have the highest of expectations for this book after reading mixed reviews, but after seeing it as a recommended book at a nice little bookshop and requesting it through the library, I decided to go ahead and give it a try anyway and I'm glad I did. I admit that the narrator in this novel having the same name as the author is strange, but his name only comes up a couple times throughout the entire book. The narrator is working as a journalist in Thailand and happens upon a story of an...more
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My favorite book of the past few years! It's not often you find an author who can both make interesting characters come alive as well as weave them into a plot that keeps you wondering where it is all going/how it can end.
The story follows (and may closely follow much of the author's own experiences; I'd be interested to know) an American reporter living in Thailand who becomes interested in the life and death of an anthropologist imprisoned for killing a missionary. He pieces toge...more
The story follows (and may closely follow much of the author's own experiences; I'd be interested to know) an American reporter living in Thailand who becomes interested in the life and death of an anthropologist imprisoned for killing a missionary. He pieces toge...more
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Read in June, 2009
Interesting story, but I was thrown off by the author making himself the narrator. His tangents did flow, although sometimes I wondered why I was getting so much back story about the Walker family when his quest was to find out what happened to Martiya Van de Luen that led her to murder. And it seems like the ending came way too fast, considering the author led us up to it in over 300 pages of text and for it to end with the narrator finally learning how and why Martiya committed murder while hi...more
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I definitely really enjoyed reading this book. I found it compelling and definitely wanted to know more. The narrator bums around Thailand while his girlfriend teaches English in that post-college time period. He gets hooked into the story of a promising Berkley Anthropologist who murdered the scion of a missionary family amongst the fictianal "Dialo" people of Northern Thailand. Definitely like my novels to be tied to actual history, not imaginary indigenous peoples. Also, after ...more
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Read in March, 2009
Here's another Entertainment Weekly recommendation that was a fascinating read. A dense, literate journal that echoes the way anthropological fieldwork is done. Mischa Berlinski is the name of the author and the name of the narrator.
When his girlfriend takes a job teaching school in Thailand for a couple of years, the narrator goes along and takes odd journalistic jobs to amuse himself until one day he hears a strange story told him by an acquaintance. An American woman Martiya livin...more
When his girlfriend takes a job teaching school in Thailand for a couple of years, the narrator goes along and takes odd journalistic jobs to amuse himself until one day he hears a strange story told him by an acquaintance. An American woman Martiya livin...more
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Read in March, 2008
OK. I don't know how I missed it. It's right there on the cover...Fieldwork...A NOVEL. It's a made up story. However, I just wasn't paying any attention and read the whole thing, completely convinced this was a true story. Part of the tedium of the anthropological details is what "convinced" me. When I got to the end and realized that, in fact, the author had made up an entire culture, language, etc., I thought, "This must have taken FOREVER, and I should get more people to read t...more
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Read in January, 2009
I got really hooked by the mystery in this book and found the retelling of the missionaries lives interesting.
I was bothered by what seemed to be two different styles of writing between the 1st person narrative of the mystery and the third person narrative of the "historical" backstory. In the author's comments at the end he said that he had planned a nonfiction book and then changed his mind and wrapped the history with the more contemporary mystery. This was too evident.
...more
I was bothered by what seemed to be two different styles of writing between the 1st person narrative of the mystery and the third person narrative of the "historical" backstory. In the author's comments at the end he said that he had planned a nonfiction book and then changed his mind and wrapped the history with the more contemporary mystery. This was too evident.
...more
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