She likes titillation, and she’d like it even better if it happened in real life and not just through her headphones.īeagin widens her lens to take in this cast of locals and upstate parvenus even as she stays focused on Greta’s rising fever. We figure out early that she has few scruples about spreading gossip. As she slouches around Hudson with her terrier, Piñon, Greta fantasizes about the people she can identify from the tapes. Thus, Greta hears tales of adultery and ortolans, of a man who imagines his penis speaking to him in the voice of James Earl Jones and another who fears his foreskin is growing back. After bunking in with Sabine, she finds work as a transcriptionist for the town’s only sex therapist, Om. She’s recently relocated from Los Angeles to the Bobo burg of Hudson, N.Y., whose main claim to fame - before the bistros rolled in - was its status as the first incorporated city in the U.S. Greta doesn’t mind any of this, at least not much. Its “fifty or sixty thousand” inhabitants provide both a potent metaphor and an oddly anodyne threat to a household where thrillingly expensive window treatments bulge with stink bugs and the centuries-old walls are no match for the upstate New York chill. This hive is situated between the ceiling of the kitchen and the floor of the bedroom above it. It’s not just that Sabine’s thoughts revolve around it and not just that it’s right above the hearth. ‘The blend of real and wit made for a wonderfully sublime experience.At the center of the house where Greta, the 40-something narrator of Jen Beagin’s eccentric and wise new novel, “ Big Swiss,” lives with her longtime friend and flaky landlady Sabine, is a beehive. ‘ I haven’t read a book this engrossing for a long time.’
‘The premise is bizarre but brilliant! I am ready to move to Hudson, NY to meet these folks!’ A new – and not entirely honest – relationship is going to be born.Ī relationship that will transform both of their lives. What Greta doesn’t know is that she’s about to bump into Big Swiss in the local dog park. Greta is miles away, sitting at a desk in her own house, wearing only headphones, fingerless gloves, a kimono, and legwarmers, transcribing this disembodied voice. Greta and Big Swiss are not in the same room, or even the same building. Nor has Greta actually ever been to Switzerland. Well that’s how Greta imagines seeing her they haven’t actually ever met in person. She’s a head-turner: including the heads of infants and dogs. Greta can see her now: dressed top to toe in white, that adorable gap between her two front teeth, her penetrating blue eyes.
That’s Greta’s nickname for her – she is tall, and she is from Switzerland. Trauma shouldn’t be this fun.’ SARA PASCOE I laughed so hard it ached.’ GILLIAN ANDERSON ‘Made me laugh and think too much (the right amount?) about sex and death and honesty.‘ MONICA HEISEY ** SOON TO BE A MAJOR HBO SERIES STARRING JODIE COMER **
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