Fieldwork: A Novel
2 journalers for this copy...
A journalist joins his girlfriend in Thailand planning to vacation and relax while she works. When he catches wind of a story of an American Anthropologist's suicide in a Thai prison, he can't help but follow the lead, and start to doubt the official story. This mystery takes on broader ideas of what it means to have social scientists and missionaries living anoung the hilltribes of northern Thailand.
Sorry to take so long to journal this. Book looks good; thanks for sending.
This book has been sitting on my shelves for 10 years. It's always looked interesting, but never quite made it to the top of the pile. I direct you to Stephen King's review complaining that the marketing of this book made it less popular than it should have been.
The book combines a lot of description of Thailand with a multi-layered mystery and an examination of the role of anthropologists and missionaries in the lives of indigenous people. At the center of the story is an anthropologist who has gone to prison for murdering an American missionary. As her story is told, the reader sees life in the field through her eyes (in the form of letters that she'd written to a friend), and descriptions of her from a variety of sources.
The pacing was good and kept me riveted through the whole story.
The narrator for the audiobook version did a nice job with the narration, making this easy to listen to. I went back and forth between the narration and the text.
The book combines a lot of description of Thailand with a multi-layered mystery and an examination of the role of anthropologists and missionaries in the lives of indigenous people. At the center of the story is an anthropologist who has gone to prison for murdering an American missionary. As her story is told, the reader sees life in the field through her eyes (in the form of letters that she'd written to a friend), and descriptions of her from a variety of sources.
The pacing was good and kept me riveted through the whole story.
The narrator for the audiobook version did a nice job with the narration, making this easy to listen to. I went back and forth between the narration and the text.