Far afield susanna kaysen biography

The first leg on my Orbis Terrarum Reading Challenge is complete and it was a fantastic voyage. I read "Far Afield", by Susanna Kaysen (NY: Vintage, 2002), the author's second novel, originally published in 1990 and reissued after the huge success of her memoir about time spent in a mental hospital, "Girl, Interrupted", later made into the Wynona Ryder vehicle of the same title.

"Far Afield" took me and the hero, Jonathan Brand, to the Danish territory of the Faroes Islands, a cluster in the North Atlantic, located between Iceland and Scotland.

Jonathan is a Boston anthropology student doing fieldwork on this Scandinavian nation, to the dismay of his professors, who don't feel that cultures with newspapers deserve study. He perseveres and diligently studies the Faroese language, folkways and history.

This meticulous preparation by the introspective and quiet Jonathan is in contrast with the other two Americans he encounters while on assignment: Wooley, another anthropology grad stud