FAR AFIELD

by Susanna Kaysen

Jonathan Brand, a graduate student in anthropology, has decided to do his fieldwork in the remote Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic. But, despite his Harvard training, he can barely understand, let alone "study," the culture he encounters. From his struggles with the local cuisine to his affair with the Danish woman the locals want him to marry, Jonathan is both repelled by and drawn into the Faroese way of life. Wry and insightful, Far Afield reveals reveals Susanna Kaysen's gifts of imagination, satire, and compassion.

Genres: Fiction, Anthropology, Travel, Contemporary, Novels, The United States Of America, Literary Fiction

338 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Susanna Kaysen is an American author best known for her memoir Girl, Interrupted, based on her experiences at McLean Hospital. Born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she is the daughter of economist Carl Kaysen. Her other works include Asa, As I Knew Him, Far Afield, The Camera My Mother Gave Me, and Cambridge. Kaysen has also lived in the Faroe Islands and often draws on personal experiences in her writing.

Reviews

[Jamie Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have spent my summer furiously and rapidly reading a spate of excellent books, and this was my favorite. This was one that I had seen prominently displayed at the public library's randomly chosen display of "Paperback fun!". I actually felt guilty when I checked it out (because the cover is emblazoned with "BY THE AUTHOR OF GIRL INTERRUPTED" - a book that I didn't read that was made into an imperfect movie that I assumed was written and consumed by the type of person who glamorizes pretty girls suffering). Additionally, I felt burdened, because I knew that the protagonist was male and boring, and that the subject was, to me, male and boring. A novel about a boring male protagonist (self-hating anthropology grad student) plumbing a boring male culture (scandinavian sea-bound community) written by a female who sexualizes female suffering? It was with a heavy heart that I cracked the spine . . .
I WAS WRONG! I was fascinated by the strong sense of place and local community, seen through the eyes and ideas of an observant, hesitant, and self-loathing outsider. I identified totally - and self-loathingly- with the by turns lethargic, inspired, savvy, moronic, impulsive, over-considered protagonist. I loved the novel's occasional lyrical interludes and omnipresent sense of humor and irony.
Read it now!
My favorite part was the odd comparison drawn between the habits of puffins raising their young and the habits of overly academic young professors raising their young :).
love,
J

[Jessaka · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a humorous book that I would enjoy reading again. It is a story about a young man who goes to the Faroe Islands to apply his archeological skills and finds himself really having to adapt, but the natives there are more than willing to teach him. It is quite humorous at times.

[Aloke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe four stars because Jonathan is so insufferable. It's ok, I don't need to love my characters but some of the navel gazing passages drag on.

But five stars because of all the other characters and beautiful descriptions.

[Trilby · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sort of graduate-student Bildungsroman, this novel centers on the protagonist's year in the Faroe Islands working on his dissertation.
I was pretty excited when I got this book as a gift from my friend Pat, whose college friend at Cornell provided the model for Kaysen's main character, Jonathan Brand. After all, I love all things Northern Atlantic (read: Iceland) and the Faroes are just smaller, more exotic Icelands, right? Well, not quite.

Since I have never been to the Faroes, I took it on faith that this would be an accurate portrayal of the place. Hence I was almost shocked at Kaysen's description of "primitive" folk whose way of life resembles their Viking ancestors'. In addition to killing thousands of fish and birds, they slaughter whole pods of whales, shoot and butcher sheep in their kitchens, and ritualistically torture and kill cats. They are carnivores par excellence, presumably because that is the main food available to them.

I asked Pat about her impression of the book, since she had visited the Faroes last year. She thought the book presented the islands to be way bleaker than they are. In fact, it makes the Faroes into the bleakest, most godforsaken patches of rock on Earth.

What disturbed me as I read the book is that I couldn't reconcile this view of the Faroes with my impression of Iceland. Could they really live so differently on the Faroes? Was everyday slaughter and epic battle with the elements a way of life there?

Then I checked the publication date: 1990. Aha! When the book came out twenty years ago, it was greeted with rave reviews. Readers loved the neurotic grad student protagonist, the satire of village life, the poetic descriptions of land and sea. And so did I. But the Faroes have changed significantly since this book was written, and that, I think, is the source of my problem with it.

Like Icelanders, contemporary Faroese have a 100% literacy rate, and many speak several languages. Just about every family has an Internet connection. But also like Icelanders, they have continued the tradition of whaling. A quick check on Google revealed that the Faroese continue the annual mass slaughter of pilot whales, bringing these sea mammals to the brink of extinction.

Both nations do whaling not because they must have the meat for food, but because it's a time-honored tradition. They do not have to rely on rotten whale sandwiches or sheep's head soup for meals, and fresh food is available year-round. Maybe this just underscores Kaysen's point that violence remains a part of the Norse culture and heritage--although what European culture doesn't have its violent aspects?

The vivid characterizations and wild setting presented in Kaysen's clear and beautiful prose were what I like best about it. But the obviously "metaphorical" excursions into landscape bothered me (too precious) and I got very impatient with self-doubting, intellectual, only-child Jonathan--too much like myself?

Maybe I would've enjoyed the novel more if I had read it as a period piece. But truth to say, I couldn't get through "Moby Dick" for the same reason I skipped over sections describing the mayhem and slaughter in "Far Afield." If I want to read about violence on the North Atlantic islands, I probably should just stick to the sagas. Horses may get pushed off cliffs and a berserker may hack someone's head off, but at least I don't have to read about harpooning, beaching, butchering, and other nasty things happening to whales, or sheep, or cats, or other animals.

[Elizabeth Theiss Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

An angst ridden graduate student moves to one of the Faroe Islands for a year to study the local culture for his dissertation at Harvard. Jonathan is a post industrial worrier who wears his anxieties on his sleeve. He has come to a small fishing village with one provision shop to inhabit a simple cottage with no phone.

Jonathan’s entree to the world of the islanders is his willingness to work hard, which they admire. When his toilet won’t flush, helpful islanders loan him a wheelbarrow with which to transport an excess of septic waste to a remote cliffside for dumping into the ocean. A crowd surrounds him as he shovels waste and struggles with his distaste for the job at hand. Gradually, he is accepted by the locals who invite him to dinner (rotting fish is on the menu); to help round up the collective sheep and drive them to their winter pasture (the pay is one live sheep, delivered to his kitchen where it is slaughtered); to assist in the annual whale slaughter (followed by a bacchanalian dance); and to be part of the rhythm of village life.

I adored this book. Jonathan is a genuine pill and therefore the perfect foil for the matter of fact islanders who live in a pre-industrial fishing economy with a powerful logic all its own. “So so so,” they say to open any conversation. Whatever Jonathan is worrying about, it doesn’t matter nearly so much as a successful whale kill or finding a proper wife. Descriptions of the Faroes and their rugged way of life are magical. I’m a long distance hiker who is especially fond of walking along coastal cliffs and now I would love to visit the Faroe Islands.



Highly recommended.

[Rainbowgardener · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written, at times poetic description of a young graduate student 's year in the Faroe Islands, sort of pretending to be an anthropologist. Therein lies the problem. Jonathan is a pretty insufferable, self-centered, moody type, who doesn't seem to care much about being an anthropologist, know much about how to go about it, or really want to be an anthropologist when he grows up.
He keeps a distance between himself an everyone else and has really never had much in the way of relationships. This might make him a good anthropologist/ observer, if he were better at observing, rather than being constantly, neurotically self-observing.
It seems like there was potential for this to be one of those stories about some one self-centered, depressed, lost in their own mind who comes to this world of no electronics or even electricity and learns how to really live. He kills a sheep, then kills a whale, learns how to eat really disgusting stuff, learns how to drink way too much alcohol, does some male bonding, makes love to a woman (but never forms any real connection with her and basically rapes her the next morning). But there's not much sense of him really coming alive or finding the joy (?) in all this. At the end, he sails for home and it is not clear that he has been changed by it at all.
The rape and a long drawn out scene of the islanders killing a whole pod of whales, way more than they needed for meat were horrible, enough to make it hard to keep reading or liking the book.

[Tóra · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is quite interesting to read a book about your own country.

Jonathan is an American anthropologist and is going to spend a year in the Faroe Islands. The story takes place in one of the smaller islands in the 80s. It was a really weird experience to read about my home country in English and in a way of foreignness.

I was about to give the book four stars, but I decided on three stars because it is all very extreme in a way. There are many important features in this book - sheep hunting, whale slaughter and the classical faroese temun. But it is so extreme, I don't think anyone does it this way anymore.

"The point isn't to like it." "The point is to experience it.
A man does not choose his homeland, Jonathan."

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book, you will love it and it will linger in your heart. The writing is lyrical; the setting sublime and the characters engaging.

[N.N. Heaven · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Girl, Interrupted years ago and was pleased Kaysen wrote fiction. This was very different from her debut but in many ways, so much better! Highly recommend!

[Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of people read "Girl, Interrupted!", especially after the film with Angeline Jolie, but this was an excellent book in itself of a man lost who suddenly finds himself in a place as far removed from the world as you could imagine. (Anthropology will do that...) I'm not sure if I would enjoy it as much now but it's a very good story so if you happen upon a copy, I'd recommend checking it out. Or don't. See if I care!

[Reading Fury · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an unusual and beautiful read. Jonathan, a grad student whose area is anthropology sort of by the elimination process rather than passionate choice, bucks his advisors and decides to study the culture of the Faroe Islands. He is ill-prepared in all ways. Ultimately, it is hard to tell who is studying whom--the Faroe folk or American Jonathan. This is a novel of warmth and friendliness, but with gritty facts and hard lessons. Reading this book was an intellectual and emotional journey, and frankly an unlooked for gift, for me. After shuffling about, Jonathan settles down in earnest to study the cuisine (if you can call it such), alcohol (spirits for sure!), and customs (join in or become a human zoo exhibit). One of Kaysen's strengths is developing characters that you can relate to even if you don't like them initially. Jonathan grew on me. The description of daily life is quite realistic, so much so that if ever I encounter a filled septic tank, I know what to do. Don't know that I have the stomach for it, but I have the mechanical know how. Much like a small American town, or perhaps any small town, people really know each other and what is happening at any time of day. For sure the opportunity to be gossipy and suffocating exists, but the Faroese must depend on each other for survival and certainly understand that celebrating the positive and braving the difficulties in an almost Sam Weller-ian way makes for a better quality of life. In such a lovely place of soul and heart, Jonathan gets a lot more than a thesis from his experience.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has one of my biggest pet peeves in literature, namely, an insufferable main character obsessed with his own intellect. However, Kaysen does something unique which is that she KNOWS her character is unsympathetic, arrogant, and yes, kind of annoying. We are not meant to be in awe of his intellect which is how these characters are often written, we are meant to realize how even though he considers himself intelligent he is woefully unprepared for empathizing with a different world, sometimes we even laugh at him, and we may recognize little ugly parts of ourselves in the character of Jonathan. Because he is not coddled by the author and we the readers are not patronized by the narration, it makes his slow character growth and realization that maybe he isn't that special after all that much more endearing.
The side characters in the book are wonderful and never reduced to stereotypes. Kaysen often upends our expectations of how someone the reader has unconsciously typecast, like the overenthusiastic Californian anthropologist Wooley, is supposed to act, and then we realize we were making the same assumptions as Jonathan. The Faroe Islands are characters in and of themselves and the way the landscape and customs are described is beautiful. I mentally started planning a trip even though normally going there would not appeal to me at all (I hate the cold, I'm mostly vegetarian, and I get seasick)
A hidden gem.

[Agustina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This struck me as a very quiet book. Not much happens and there isn't much drama. Instead, it's quite ruminative.

Jonathan is a generally endearing narrator, but his misanthropy sometimes gets tedious. He travels to the Faroe Islands to carry out ethnographic research where he spends a lot of time wandering aimlessly around, small misfortunes befall him, he befriends some villagers, observes their customs, interacts with a rival anthropologist and has a brief affair with a Faroese woman.

There are plenty of informative descriptions of the minutae of Faroese life, from their fishy diet to the rugged landscape. However, these descriptions did sometimes feel very old, particularly with the Cold War references which sounded very foreign to my gen-Z self. The islands have probably changed immensely since this book's publication.

There are some interesting situations where Jonathan despairs at how utterly different and in his eyes barbaric the Faroese culture is, yet as an anthropologist he does not feel right judging them such as the violent whale hunt or when the children kill a cat and justify it by saying it is traditional

Despite being fiction, it feels quite real in that it is not excessively melodramatic, but this lack of drama sometimes makes it drag a bit.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. I really enjoyed this book, which read so much like a memoir that I had to keep reminding myself it was fiction. The book (written in 1990) is a year in the life of a disaffected and depressive Harvard grad student in anthropology who heads off to the remote Faroe Islands (near and not near to Iceland, Scotland, and Norway in the Atlantic) to work on a project for his degree. Of course, island life is a huge part of the atmosphere of the book, how residents both love and hate it, its beauty and deprivations, and more. How Jonathan navigates the island, the weather, the locals, and himself in ways funny, profound, sad, and happy are what make this a unique and delightful read. If you choose to read it, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Kaysen's Far Afield caught my eye for being set in the Faroe Islands. I'd not read anything there and, hoping it might by similar to Mary MacLeod's delightful Call the Nurse and Nurse, Come You Here!, both of which are set in the neighboring Shetlands, I harbored great hope for this fictional account of life in the Faroes. In the end, Far Afield was both too similar to too different to hold my interest. Would I consider going back to this when MacLeod is less fresh in my mind? Perhaps. But my reading list is long and the time to read too short.

[Robin · Rating 1 out of 5]

The speed of which I read this book says enough about what I thought of it. I have been to the Faroe Islands so the events of the book don't surprised me and the speed of the book matches life there but I just didn't like the book.


I was particularly bothered by the part of story when Daniela visits him because he sexually assaulted her.:
"Stop it," she said.
But it was too late to stop..."
When he later that he thought about the weekend, he said that everything went well. What a jerk!

[Phyllis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very different story. Interesting story of a young man who travels to the Faroe Islands and spends a year studying the culture on one of the smallest island. Finds the life at first primitive and then oddly soothing in its simplicity . The terrible weather, limited diet and odd customs make him seem to yearn to be a part of the odd group of people that take him in. He is lulled into a sense of peace that makes him want to stay but in the end, when his year is up he returns home to Boston .

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been a long time since I cried at the end of a book. As a modern person, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to live in a place vastly different and more rural than my own surroundings. This book offers a glimpse of what a year in the Faroe Islands would be like. The difficulty of adjusting, the difficulty making friends, the abrupt change in diet, customs and culture. And at the end, real affection for the people this students got to know.

[Blossom Storms · Rating 2 out of 5]

The plot could have been really interesting and the characters could have been really compelling if they were given the development they deserved. Instead the plot meandered and too much time was spent on the main character's internal whining to give time to anything else. I spent the book waiting for more development in the story and the interesting characters and at the end was still left wanting.

[Marie Fouhey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is beautifully written book. Not much happens in terms of a plot. It concerns the year long stay of an archeology student in the Faroe Islands, his interaction with the local people, and how this stay changes him. The book was written in the 1990s and the author apparently lived in the Faroe Islands in the 1970s so the islands might be very different now.

[John Pedersen · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me, this had a very slow start, but some really great images and observations partway through the second half. Ending was good, but not as good as the late middle.

More observational than plot-driven or fast, but worth the time if you have the time and are interested in the Faeroes (some time ago) or in isolated communities.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Years ago I picked up this book. I don't remember why or how the book came to me but that book has always stayed with me probably because I had never heard of the Faroe Islands. Today I saw a fantastic photo from the Faroe Islands and I thought of this book.

[Maegan Wingert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written and beautiful book. The way it was written made you feel like you were really there and that you were really connected with the characters. I cried at the end because of how good it was.

[Sally Duffy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought it would promise more than it did. It was not a bad book, but far from stellar.
Sally Duffy

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

A favorite which I read every couple years.

[Gwendolyn Miner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have no idea why I added this to my to read list. But I did enjoy it. Much self reflection and a journey in a young man's life in a different country.

[Bertha Rachinski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting story of life among the Faroe people- hard to follow at times.

[Kathy Daggett]

In the end I was really glad I read this book to learn about a place so far away and so isolated that it is like a separate world.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an awesome book of contrasts and discovery. His past and present combine to deliver a Wonderful tale that both shocked me, and humbled me. Go read it! You’ll love it too!

[Sarah Potemkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Timeless American-in-another-culture book, with a good dose of Faroe culture.