A refreshingly odd new novel

Funny ha ha AND funny strange

It’s fun to read something properly weird sometimes, isn’t it? Something that shakes you out of the malaise of everyday life/conventional storytelling and immerses you in someone else’s quite bonkers world view.

My friend Emily had mentioned this strange new novel she just read about a woman who transcribes therapy sessions and falls in love with a patient and I’d made a mental note to seek it out at some point. Then the very next day, a friend at work waved her copy under my nose and told me how funny it was and I decided to listen to the universe (i.e Emily and Helen).

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin tells the story of Greta, a somewhat contrarian 45-year-old woman who lives with her dog, Piñon, in a dilapidated farmhouse in Hudson, Upstate New York. She shares the house with its owner, her friend Sabine, a similarly quirky 55-year-old who makes edibles at home.

The product of a sad and traumatic upbringing, Greta has recently abandoned a long-term relationship and left her life in LA. She is prone to solitude and spends her days feeding the insatiable wood burner in her squalid bedroom, lest she freeze to death. The house isn’t just dirty, it’s infested with bees, flies and maggots and is falling apart at the seams which I found quite stressful to read about but does really add to the ominous mood of this book.

Greta’s job is to transcribe sessions for the local oddball sex therapist, Om, a pretentious ninny with a big ego and propensity to speak over his patients. (When Greta first meets Om, he’s wearing a felt fedora, eyeliner, a linen tunic, and tight denim shorts.)

She quickly becomes obsessed with a new patient whom she nicknames Big Swiss because initially, all Greta knows is that she is tall and from Switzerland. Big Swiss is a gynaecologist who’s never had an orgasm. Like Greta, she’s experienced a terrible trauma but exhibits an refreshing lack of self-pity which Greta, whose own demons seem to complicate her daily existence, finds compelling.

When she bumps in to Big Swiss accidentally-on-purpose in the local dog park, a dark and torrid affair begins.

I complained recently about the deflating listlessness of so many modern day female narrators and Greta is certainly droll and messy but her idiosyncratic behaviour and frank self-awareness somehow offsets this deadening effect. This narrative voice is engaging and sympathetic and the plot is really engrossing.

Another thing to note. There is an abundance of oral sex in this novel. Like, A LOT. I like excessive cunnilingus descriptions as much as the next guy but I have to say that I found many of the sex scenes coldly anatomical. We frequently hear how primal and urgent Greta and Big Swiss’ desire is for one another- there’s a lot of sniffing of body parts too - but the intimate moments themselves can be quite joyless. In some ways, I think this might be the point though. The women’s connection is fraught and intense but their respective traumas and personalities seem to complicate their ability to experience pleasure without attendant pain. But don’t let this heaviness put you off! Woven through all of this is enough humour and quirk to offset the darkness.

Greta is a funny and original creation and this book is truly offbeat and surreal in an often bland and underwhelming literary landscape. It’s also an interesting meditation on trauma and to what extent our behaviour and decisions can be explained by/blamed on our histories.

Do have a read and tell me what you think.

See you next time!

Hannah