Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
A brilliantly original and funny novel about a sex therapist’s transcriptionist who falls in love with a client while listening to her sessions. When they accidentally meet in real life, an explosive affair ensues.
Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. The house, built in 1737, is unrenovated, uninsulated, and full of bees. Greta spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss, since she’s tall, stoic, and originally from Switzerland. Greta is fascinated by Big Swiss’s refreshing attitude toward trauma. They both have dark histories, but Big Swiss chooses to remain unattached to her suffering while Greta continues to be tortured by her past.
One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice at the dog park. In a panic, she introduces herself with a fake name and they quickly become enmeshed. Although Big Swiss is unaware of Greta’s true identity, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship…
Bold, outlandish, and filled with irresistible characters, Big Swiss is both a love story and also a deft examination of infidelity, mental health, sexual stereotypes, and more—from an amazingly talented, one-of-a-kind voice in contemporary fiction.
Review:
This was a fun read. Greta–the main character–is the hottest of hot messes and I loved her. She’s not had a great life. Despite having to deal with her mother’s suicide when she was a teen (and still writing letters to her dead mother as an adult), and being held at gunpoint while working as a pharmacy tech she constantly insists that she is “not one of those trauma people”.
After the incident at the pharmacy, Greta left her fiancé and their mostly comfortable life in LA behind and moved to Hudson New York where she lives in a drafty old house with her equally eccentric friend Sabine (and a hive of bees that live in a massive hive above the living room. Greta now works as a transcriptionist for a very eccentric sex therapist who goes by the name Om. Greta knows all the sexy secrets of everyone in town, and even though the transcripts never contain the client’s names, she easily recognizes their voices whenever she is out and about.
Greta becomes infatuated with one of Om’s clients–a female gynecologist from Switzerland who Greta dubs “Big Swiss”. Big Swiss was the victim of a horrendous sex crime and, despite now being a successful gynecologist and married to a lovely man, she still has hang-ups and cannot have an orgasm. Big Swiss insists that even though what happened to her was tragic, she won’t let it control her.
Greta grows increasingly enamored by Big Swiss, and when she hears her voice one day at the dog park, she introduces herself to her and gives her a fake name. She knows she shouldn’t be doing this. Om has forbidden her from interacting with any of his patients and considers it a breech of patient/client confidentiality. Even though she is jeopardizing her job, Greta persists in seeing Big Swiss (whose name we learn is actually Flavia) and the two women embark on a very torrid affair. Now Greta is lying to Flavia about her actual identity, and Flavia is lying to her husband and they’re both lying to themselves, believing their past traumas have no control over their lives.
I really enjoyed this book – and laughed out loud several times, but for some reason the ending felt unfinished to me. I’m not exactly sure what it was, but it left me going, “Huh, that’s it?” On one hand it ended the way it needed to, but it left me wanting a little more – I just can’t really articulate what “more” is. I enjoyed Greta and Flavia’s stories, but honestly, I think I most enjoyed finding out the dirty little secrets of some of the townsfolk as Greta transcribes their sessions.
This was an enjoyable read – good, not great, but enjoyable.
