Having listened to Big Swiss’s voice for so many hours, Greta felt an immediate intimacy, in the same way her favorite podcast hosts sometimes felt like friends, insofar as she’d gone through divorces with podcasters, the death of parents and beloved pets, and so she couldn’t help but feel a little starstruck. Here was Big Swiss, in the flesh! Talking to Greta, a nobody!`
Big Swiss reads like a rather manic exploration of trauma and power dynamics and the kooky side of the therapy industry — overlaid with snark and sex and hipsterism — and while that made for a pretty compelling and amusing novel (it was totally unpredictable), the tone felt a bit too cynical to make me care about the characters; so much sizzle, so little steak. Set in the trendy and picturesque town of Hudson in upstate New York — the current home of author Jen Beagin, according to the author blurb — and telling the colourful tale of beautiful, broken people, I can see how this novel sparked a bidding war in Hollywood; and while I’m sure that HBO can make a popular series out of the material, this wasn’t exactly what I look for in a novel (but I was amused leading up to the not-quite-satisfying ending). High three stars.
Greta barely moved these days. Only her fingers moved, and not very fast. Although by no means an excellent typist, she was semidiscreet, and because Hudson was so one-horse and gossipy, discretion was everything. She’d signed what looked like a pretty official confidentiality agreement, so she was forbidden to talk shit about Om’s clients. Not that she wanted to — she had always been less of a shit-talker and more of a shit-thinker, and she barely left the house. She typically waited until midafternoon to get started and then worked until bedtime. They talked, she typed, nighty-night.
Having suffered childhood trauma that left her unwilling to totally engage in living, and recently ending a ten year engagement to a supportive and loving California man, Greta decided to move to upstate New York with an old friend and live with her in a draughty old farmhouse (just like the draughty old farmhouse Beagin was living in while she wrote this novel). To support herself, Greta transcribes recordings of sex therapy sessions, and while typing away, she becomes obsessed with the voice and story of one patient whom she nicknames “Big Swiss”. This woman, Flavia, has survived violence herself, but what most intrigues Greta about her is that Flavia refuses to let the trauma define her; she does not feel “broken”, even if her circumstances have prompted her to seek the services of Om: a mesh shirt and tight denim shorts wearing sex therapist who offers gong baths and kundalini breathing as remedy. When Greta and Flavia accidentally meet at the dog park, Greta gives a fake name; and when the pair start a passionate love affair, the reader feels both pleased that these unhappy individuals find happiness together and uncomfortable that the relationship is built on a lie (and especially as Greta continues to listen to and transcribe Flavia’s therapy sessions). Learning more about each character’s backstory as the narrative unwinds, and waiting to see how the inevitable moment of truth will land with Flavia, makes for an interesting enough journey.
Although both women experience a catharsis in this affair, there is a definite power imbalance: Greta is older (45 to Flavia’s 28), she has been with women before, and as she is privy to the therapy tapes, she is able to “get into” Flavia’s mind and make comments that make her feel like they are connected on a soul level. On the other hand, Greta lets herself be defined by her trauma — living in a friend’s house, needing to warm her freezing bed with a hair dryer (as, apparently, the author did while writing this), and working piecemeal at transcription doesn’t look like stability at her age — while Flavia is strong, incredibly beautiful, a doctor who is married to a fabulously wealthy local man, and who always has the perfect blunt response to cut through others’ BS: Big Swiss is no one’s victim, and she holds power of a different sort.
Now Big Swiss was quiet. Was she a handful? Yes. But the thought of never handling her again? Unbearable.
The setting of a dilapidated early Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, the work of a transcriptionist, even the miniature donkeys: these are all, apparently, details from the author’s life, and perhaps the addition of so much real-life info is what makes this novel feel a bit sprawling (nothing about Greta’s housemate, Sabine, feels relevant to the storyline, but I guess it adds verisimilitude and I would accept it as unsurprising if I learned that she was based on Beagin’s actual housemate). Even so, there is a slightly manic-comedic tone (almost Wes Andersonesque; the therapist, Om, seems custom-made for one of his films) that prevented me from emotionally connecting with the characters, and that’s why I’m not rating higher — that and an underwhelming payoff to the main plot conflict — but I wouldn’t recommend against reading this; sizzle has its place.
