Big Swiss
'Incredible book. . . I couldn't put it down.' Jodie Comer
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4.0 • 34 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
** SOON TO BE A MAJOR HBO SERIES STARRING JODIE COMER **
'Made me laugh and think too much (the right amount?) about sex and death and honesty.' MONICA HEISEY
'Utterly addictive. . . I laughed so hard it ached.' GILLIAN ANDERSON
'Juicy, salacious and compelling. Trauma shouldn't be this fun.' SARA PASCOE
Greta liked knowing people's secrets. That wasn't a problem. Until she met Big Swiss.
Big Swiss. That's Greta's nickname for her - she is tall, and she is from Switzerland. Greta can see her now: dressed top to toe in white, that adorable gap between her two front teeth, her penetrating blue eyes. She's a head-turner: including the heads of infants and dogs.
Well that's how Greta imagines seeing her; they haven't actually ever met in person. Nor has Greta actually ever been to Switzerland.
Greta and Big Swiss are not in the same room, or even the same building. 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.
What Greta doesn't know is that she's about to bump into Big Swiss in the local dog park. A new - and not entirely honest - relationship is going to be born.
A relationship that will transform both of their lives. . .
Readers are obsessed with Big Swiss:
'This thing is a riot. I laughed out loud regularly. I've never read anything quite like it.'
'This book is f u n n y'
'The premise is bizarre but brilliant! I am ready to move to Hudson, NY to meet these folks!'
'I haven't read a book this engrossing for a long time.'
'The blend of real and wit made for a wonderfully sublime experience.'
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Beagin (Vacuum in the Dark) delivers a delightfully off-kilter romantic comedy set in a Hudson Valley increasingly transformed by transplants from New York City. The protagonist, Greta, is in her 40s, living in a semi-derelict Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, N.Y., with her beloved dog, Piñón. Greta is working as a transcriptionist for a local sex therapist named Om when she is captivated by the voice of one of Om's patients, a 30-something married woman whom she nicknames Big Swiss for her height and nationality, who used to live in Brooklyn. At the dog park, Greta and Big Swiss (whose real name is Flavia) meet by chance, and romance between the two blossoms, complicated by the fact that Greta is privy to Big Swiss's most private inner thoughts. While the interpersonal intrigue is palpable, this is also very much a novel about place, full of alternately snide and affectionate commentary about the rapidly gentrifying town. When encountering another of the therapist's patients and his wife at a coffee shop, Greta notes, "like most people in Hudson, they were better looking than average and dressed like boutique farmers." Beagin is a gifted storyteller with a flair for the eccentric and a soft spot for a wayward soul. This unconventional love story has a surplus of appeal from page one.
Customer Reviews
Swiss cheesy
3.5 stars
The author is an American cleaning lady turned novelist. She has an MFA in creative writing from UC Irvine, and won a 2017 Whiting Award in fiction. Pretend I'm Dead (2015) and Vacuum in the Dark (2019) are based around a character who cleans houses. They are a scream (not in the Freddie Kruger sense). Ms B now lives in Hudson, New York, which is the setting of this, her third novel.
Greta is mid-forties and lives with (is a tenant of) Sabine, a late fifties ex-hippy, in a ramshackle old Dutch house with a large beehive in the ceiling on the first floor. Greta’s relationship with her mother, who died when Greta was was 13, was unusual to put it mildly, and remains unresolved. Our gal was raised by a series of equally weird siblings of her mother, became a waitress, then a functionary in a pharmaceutical supply warehouse in California, and finally moved to rural up state New York. She works as a transcriptionist for the local (unregistered) psychotherapist, who spent time in India which might of might not explain his name: Om. He sets great store in the therapeutic properties of his gong, which our gal keeps calling a dong. Suffice it to say the people of Hudson NY are sufficiently disturbed as to be willing to get therapy wherever they can. Om has a thriving business. Transcribing his recorded consultations gives our gal unique insights into her local community, although she signed an NDA so she can’t reveal them. One day, our gal and a tall blonde woman named Flavia, whom Greta calls Big Swiss because she comes originally from Switzerland, meet in a dog park. Loves blossoms for a while. Greta gets therapy herself and her boss learns her dark secrets. The end.
The writing is disjointed at times (deliberately so) but pacy, and frequently laugh-out-loud funny, as was the case in Ms Beagin’s previous novels. Unfortunately, the contrived weirdness gets tiring after a while. (Ditto the previous books).
Big Swiss
Not worth the effort.