Review: "Fieldwork" is rich and satisfying

A first novel this good makes one worry about how its young writer will ever top it. Never mind: Berlinski can coast a long time on his debut effort, which was nominated for a National Book Award.

Chock-a-block with such un-trendy ingredients as an unintrusive narrator, global reach and a big cast of memorable characters, "Fieldwork" is both wildly readable and highly intelligent.

Northern Thailand's mountains, jungles and paddies form a verdant backdrop to a richly imagined story about tribes of rice growers that have lived there for centuries. The Walker family, Christian missionaries from the United States, has been in Asia for three generations.

Then there is the mysterious Martiya van der Leun, the novel's heart of darkness. Born in Indonesia to Dutch parents, she grew up in California, studied anthropology at Berkeley and went to Thailand to do field work among the Dyal tribe.

The mystery is not that Martiya killed a Walker son, or that she spent years in jail for her crime, or that she later committed suicide in Chiang Mai Central Prison. Those facts are revealed early. What the narrator, a freelance journalist named Mischa Berlinski, seeks to discover is who she was and why she murdered David Walker.

Lengthy digressions pile up like Lincoln Logs not yet stacked into a house. Martiya "was vicious and smart, and that was sexy," says her college boyfriend. "Also, she was curious. One of the most curious people I've ever met."

Relocated to a thatch hut in the Dyal village of Dan Loi, Martiya uses her inquisitiveness to learn the exceedingly difficult Dyal language and to amass a trove of original anthropological research about the tribe.

When the narrator meets a Walker matriarch, he notes that "she was not the only Walker to refer to biblical characters in precisely the same tone of voice that one might use to describe the neighbors who let their dog run loose: 'I can't talk about Saul, he just gets me so frustrated.'"

As a young man, David Walker rebels, leaving for the United States, where for several years he dedicates himself to the worship of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. He eventually returns to Dan Loi, throwing himself into the conversion business in the remotest mountain villages.

No less fierce or fearless in middle age, Martiya has stayed on in Thailand and taken a Dyal man for a lover, a taboo relationship that also brings her into proximity with the missionaries, including David. Her unquenchable desire to know the unknowable sends her toward madness and violence.

Braided throughout Berlinksi's captivating narrative is its vivid setting, from bustling, odoriferous Bangkok to the remote countryside, here viewed on a footpath: "Somewhere along the way, a mountain summit had been leveled to make way for a stupendously large yellow Buddha, who looked out impassively from his high perch over the mountains and the plains, his cherry lips ladylike. Mysterious dirt roads forked out every now and again, leading off to God-knows-where. I wanted to follow them all."

In a novel that never fails to fascinate, Berlinski follows many such pathways.