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 story. an anthropologist shoots a Christian missionary.

at first i was riveted. the descriptive and accurate look into the lives of these missionaries had me dog-earing pages and desperately scrambling for pens to jot down my half-baked thoughts. somehow this berlinski guy had found a way to describe missionary life that was so bang on.

since i’m currently trying to rewrite my own missionary experience, i was frustrated and inspired by the way berlinski was able to capture the missionary mindset: the missionaries remained people–he gave a picture of their life that didn’t turn them into psychotic proselytizing machines.

and then. there are these random random tangents. mischa’s girlfriend (the fictional mischa, not the author) is nothing more than a prop. she is the typical stock female character and only exists to give mischa an excuse to be in thailand.

the way berlinski approached the book is utterly beyond me. it’s divided into sections: telling the story from every possible perspective. if you ask me, it would have been much more readable if he had simply told the story without involving his fictional self or his fictional girlfriend.

i’m not sure how to sum this experience up. obviously, the prose is brilliant, the research is impeccable. the story is complicated and interesting. should the few annoyances skew my overall perception? probably not. but they are.

you read it. tell me what you think.