My bookshelf·Index No. 0162

Big Swiss

Jen Beagin·Scribner·2023·352 pages
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Greta is 46, broke, and living in a half-ruined Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York, with a beekeeper and a bunch of bees in the walls. She has a job transcribing the sessions of a local sex-and-relationship coach, which means she spends all day typing out strangers’ secrets. One client gets to her: a Swiss gynecologist, 28 and married, brisk and unbothered, whom Greta privately calls Big Swiss. Then she recognizes the voice at the dog park, says hello, and doesn’t mention she’s been listening to this woman’s therapy for months. What starts there is funny and doomed in equal measure, and it works because both women are dodging something bad in their pasts and lying about how much it touched them. Beagin writes filthy, deadpan dialogue and gets away with a lot.

Big Swiss
By Jen Beagin. Scribner, 2023. 352 pages.