When his girlfriend takes a job in Thailand, Mischa Berlinski goes along for the ride, planning to enjoy himself and work as little as possible. But one evening a fellow expatriate tips him off to a story: a charismatic American anthropologist, Martiya van der Leun, has been found dead--a suicide--in the Thai prison where she was serving a life sentence for murder. Curious at first, Mischa is soon immersed in the details of her story. This brilliant, haunting novel expands into a mystery set among the Thai hill tribes, whose way of life became a battleground for the missionaries and the scientists living among them.

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A Great Escape

Henry Miller said that a good book is only important to you if you read it at the right time in your life (which is why no one, in the history of ever, has actually liked reading Edmund Spencer's Fairie Queene). I suppose that a cold, grey February in middle Tennessee was a good time and place for me to read Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski. Sitting here between jobs shivering in the night it didn't take much reaching for me to read Berlinski's descriptions of the lush greenness of Thailand and transport myself back to Singapore and Hong Kong where I used to enjoy the thick, hot, humid air and wonderful differentness of exotic cultures. God, I only wish I had gone to Thailand. So that is part of why I really enjoyed Fieldwork.
The other reason is that it is just a wonderful story. Fieldwork is the story of a promising student anthropologist, Martiya ven der Leun, who goes to live among the Dyalo, a little studied hill tribe in the mountains of northern Thailand. A large extended family of American missionaries is also there, doing the Lord's work, converting the Dyalo tribe to Christianity, a mission which family patriarch Raymond Walker had started sixty years before. The novel begins with Martiya in a Thai prison for the murder of David Walker, the charismatic heir apparent to the Walker missionary dynasty. And you'll like David, trust me. You will.
The story is a told through the information Mishca Berlinski (okay, I do wish the author hadn't used his own name for his lead character) unearths while tracking down and interviewing anyone who knows anything about Martiya, David Walker, and the murder that took place around 1991. Berlinski does some freelance work for a couple of English language publications and thinks he can sell the story.
In Fieldwork Berlinski does an outstanding job revealing metaphysical ideas and insight into the scientific method of field anthropology while framing such potential drudgery in a well paced, page-turning narrative. At no point does he come off as disparaging to any of the conflicting philosophies that comprise the book. Missionary, anthropologist, and tribal animist all get a fair shake and all get a couple of humorous jabs thrown their way.
Reading Berlinski is like going on a trip, both spiritual and physical. It is great escape literature that will stay with you long after you've turned the last page. God what a cliché line I just used. But this is a remarkable novel.

December 04, 2008

Fieldwork - An Anthropological Memoir

This tale started so quietly, but Mischa Berlinski's meticulous research and intricately woven stories within stories; produced an impressive cast of characters --- and spirits that made this novel a compelling read. Berlinski's "fieldwork" is fictional and yet is so believable. At the heart of all this, is the struggle of an indigeneous tribe in the hinterlands of Thailand; to keep its way of life --- and their unlikely champion to preserve this way of life.

November 26, 2008

Anthropological and mission work among a hill tribe in Thailand

The American journalist Mischa Berlinski is the narrator in this novel, so at times one feels it might be an autobiography, especially as in an autobiography you might find the rambling structure you find in this book; and a number of footnotes contribute to that impression. But in a note at the end the author tells us that `none of this stuff happened to anyone'.

The thread that holds the book together is the fictional Berlinski's obsessive attempt to unravel the mystery of Martiya van der Leun, an American-educated anthropologist whom he had heard about but never met, who had been working with the animist Dyalo hill tribe in Northern Thailand, had been in prison for murder and had apparently committed suicide there.

(If you google Dyalo, the references are all to this novel. Its name is invented, but the author's note suggests that the inspiration for it might be a tribe called the Lisu. The other neighbouring tribes mentioned in the book all really exist.)

The fictional Berlinski goes to meet as many people as possible who knew Martiya; and he then gives you such long and detailed histories of their lives that we quite forget about Martiya: at one stage there is no mention of her for some ninety pages.

The person she was accused of having murdered was one David Walker. We learn more and more about Martiya's life - and very interesting it is - without getting any clues, until very near the end, to the mystery of why she killed David. In fact the first meeting between Martiya and David comes just seventeen pages before the conclusion of the book.

David belonged to an extended American family, several of whom were or had been Christian missionaries. Mischa seeks them out, and we get the life story of David's missionary parents, whom Mischa meets, and of his missionary grandparents. Though one wonders why were are told all this (only one incident in the parents' life, briefly alluded to, will have a bearing on Martiya's story), it is still very well and atmospherically done. The author Belinski writes very well, brings people very much to life and gets the reader interested in them. These missionaries may be a little odd in their total faith, their belief in evil spirits, their prayerfulness and their expectation of an imminent Rapture; but, unlike those in, say, Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible, they are presented affectionately and without mockery or condescension.

Author Belinski, we are told, has worked as a journalist in Thailand, so he is clearly knowledgeable about that country and beautifully evokes its sights and its atmosphere. Though he curiously spells the author of the Golden Bough as Frazier, he is also knowledgeable about anthropology, its theory as studied in academic institutions and its often far from glamorous field work practice - but every now and again an anthropologist goes `native'. One wonders, of course, whether he has invented the dyal, the rice planting rites of the Dyalo people; perhaps he has based them imaginatively on the customs of some other tribes described by Sir James Frazer: at any rate he has made them sound very convincing. They play a crucial role in the story, but, characteristically, we learn about them only on page 237, three-quarters of the way through.

Despite its structural oddities, this is a book full of life. I have enjoyed it very much and was fully involved with it.

November 24, 2008

Well written, engrossing story, but...

This novel tells the story of an American living in Thailand who hears about a Dutch woman who mysteriously dies in prison, after inheriting a large sum of money. The woman had been a PhD student in a top anthro program when she first arrived in Thailand, but ended up in a Thai prison for murder. The narrator sets out to discover what happened.

I really liked this book up until the last 50 pages or so. The author did an excellent job of really drawing the reader into the life of an anthropologist in the field, the life of a missionary in Asia and what can happen to a woman obsessed. But then, it almost seemed like someone was saying, "ok, wrap it up" and the explanation of why the main character did what she did was very rushed. It also didn't explore the in between---what happened after the arrest and her time in jail. Also, was it really suicide?? A lot of unanswered questions. Overall, a very nice first novel and I look forward to reading whatever he writes next.
November 06, 2008

Good for first novel

I think my expectations for this book were too high. I'd read many rave reviews here plus the Stephen King piece about the all-around poor handling it received from its publisher. And the book starts out very strong.

However, I agree with those who've called it slow. I think it bogs down in the section about the Walker family. Too much space devoted to what came off to me as generations of caricatures. Berlinski's non-missionary characters are much more well drawn.

I think Berlinski is talented. Also very interesting and imaginative. I look forward to his next book. I hope he gets a better editor.
June 26, 2008

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