A review by pennymine
Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski

4.0

Set in Thailand, about an anthropologist who kills a missionary. A visitor to Thailand becomes interested in the story and wants to know what happened. The story shifts around, telling the story of the anthropologist and of the family of the missionary. I particularly found the lives of the missionaries interesting. They were a family that had been spreading their message for generations. I have always heard of these missionary families that have been in the field for years and years and wondered what that was like. I'm not sure this is an entirely accurate portrayal, but it was interesting. The story of the anthropologist herself was also interesting, being an entirely different perspective from that of the missionary. Both the anthropologist and the missionaries worked with the same people group and in the end their different world views led to, I would say, the eventual murder of one of the missionaries. I felt that the author treated the two extreme world views fairly and also the world view of the people group around whom the narrative revolves.