This is a FANTASTICALLY unique novel, perfect for the weird / bad / mad girl trend of the moment. Think Boy Parts, Tell Me I'm Worthless, a tiny bit of Convenience Store Woman - if you like stories that go deep into a flawed character's mind, you'll really enjoy this one. It has queer romance, odd behaviour, gripping descriptions and such a strong, strange premise (but in the best possible way). A narrative on trauma, therapy, love, and honesty.

I want to thank @netgalley and @faberbooks for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was so excited to read this one after seeing so much hype all over bookstagram. The premise excited me a lot. The protagonist Greta works transcribing sessions for a sex therapist in her small town and thus gets to listen in on all these juicy conversations of people she sees around.

The book focuses a lot on trauma, both the way we carry our own and the way we perceive others’, and how it shapes our lives. I always enjoy this as a theme in a novel, but do think it could have gone deeper. I also enjoyed the queerness, especially with Greta at age 45 being older than is typically found in popular queer fiction.

It was a wacky read but it just didn’t have the real biting humour of other books I’ve read in a similar vein. I think I struggled to connect to the characters as well. It’s so strongly character driven that most of the book felt like no plot, just vibes.

Throughout the book there were a few casual racist comments said by Greta. I’m not sure if the author put these in to further portray her as an unlikeable character, but I absolutely could not look past the fact that they were not questioned or challenged at all. I also think it’s not very hard to create an unlikable character without resorting to blatant racism. There was other unnecessarily provocative language used around anorexia and sexuality that made me feel uneasy too.

I know that this is being turned into a TV series with Jodie Comer as Flavia/Big Swiss, which I am excited for. Though this is purely because I adore her and will watch anything that she is in - and I think this is incredible casting. I hope that they remove the racist language completely - and if so, then I am sure the series will achieve the rare task of being better than the book.

Strangely compelling, for a cast of characters that are some what unlikeable and annoying. I couldn't get enough of Greta & Big Swiss and devoured it in one whole weekend, squeezing in chapters anywhere I could. Om even grew on me by the end of the book!

It is quirky, and dark humored but Jen Beagin keeps it pacey even though it focuses on a lot of traumatic experiences. I can't wait to discuss with friends once they have read!

I saw so much hype for Big Swiss long before I could get my hands on it and I am so happy it lived up to expectations. Big Swiss was so original (I truly haven't read anything like it!) and darkly funny, while also exploring trauma in a way that doesn't feel tacky.
The characters are the drivers of this story, and I enjoyed learning more about the pair and how their experiences fed each others development. Beagin created a really atmospheric piece that was incredibly engaging and hard to put down.

This really kept me hooked, it was captivating in the best way, like nothing I've ever read before. Not necessarily one I'd re read but the cast of weird and wonderful characters will stay with more for a while!

a novel about a woman in her 40s who transcribes sex therapy is an undeniably intriguing concept, and jen beagin has written it incredibly. despite the content being quirky and unique, there is something so familiar about the writing, as if the story is being told specifically to you.

there is a very specific kind of humour in this that may not work for a lot of people, but it definitely worked for me. I also think that dialogue can be a tricky thing to rely on in novels, but the the dialogue is balanced so well (especially when jumping in and out of transcripts) that the book just wouldn’t work without it.

I think big swiss is going to be a favourite queer read for many, myself included.

thank you to netgalley and the publishers for this digital arc in exchange for review !

Really weird but in a good way- I think?
Parts of this I really loved and I thought were really excellent. I loved the relationship with piñon especially. I felt that parts of the book weren’t very connected and it felt very fractured as though different edits had been pushed together and the novel was at different stages of completion in these parts.
I think above all this is a good book but I didn’t like it or enjoy reading it necessarily? I loved the moshfeghesque grotesque and detached style but it just wasn’t for me ultimately.

HUDSON, a small town in upstate New York is teeming with hipster transplants from the Big Apple, who have migrated there on the back of city success to escape the rat race by setting up artisan businesses that they don’t really need to be successful at, all to wallow in their various neuroses.
What they need to survive, along with someone reliable to keep them in a constant supply of good quality marijuana and enough coffee shops and wine bars to choose somewhere different every day of the week, is a discreet sex therapist to help them work through affairs, weird kinks and general malcontent.
They have found such a therapist in Om, a self-styled guru, clad in hemp shorts and t-shirts, who employs a woman by the name of Greta to transcribe his sessions, ostensibly in order to help him with clarity when writing his book.
Greta herself is a fairly recent transplant to the town, however she has come there from the mid-West, fresh from a break-up that has forced her to reconsider her life choices. She has moved in with an old friend who owns a huge, bee-infested, ramshackle house just outside of town, where she works her own hours listening to and recording Om’s meetings with his patients.
Patient-client confidentiality is honoured by not disclosing any names, but in a town as small as Hudson, and the tendency for the patients to have big, distinct personalities, it is not hard for Greta to put faces to the voices when she is at her favourite café or out shopping for groceries.
Greta is discreet, so it doesn’t matter much. That is, until the woman she designates Big Swiss comes along. Big Swiss is a gynaecologist in her late-twenties and is given the moniker as a result of her nationality and no-nonsense personality.
Greta is fascinated by this vibrant creature from the off, not least because she is participating in the sessions with Om because of a horrendous past assault that she is still trying to come to terms with. Big Swiss is married to a nondescript man, their sex life is pedestrian and she is trying to reconcile it all healthily.
Greta looks forward to transcribing these interactions, as she sits in her rickety old room that requires a constant issue of wood into a stove to keep it warm. The house in which she lives is almost alive – with memory, with history but most of all with insect infestations, and is a fitting backdrop to this quirky story, that deals with trauma, complex relationships and morality in a distinctively idiosyncratic style.
When Greta and Big Swiss – real name Flavia – finally meet, it’s at a dog park, where Greta’s beloved Jack Russell mix takes a shine to Flavia’s sophisticated purebred hound. Greta hastily constructs and identity for herself so that she is not linked to Om or the transcription job, immediately creating a skewed balance of power between the two women’s friendship, which quickly becomes an affair.
Big Swiss continues to see Om, and Greta continues to transcribe their sessions, giving her a unique insight into how her lover is feeling about their relationship. She knows it’s wrong but to expose her deception would cause unemployment as well as the loss of this surprising new relationship, so she keeps up the pretence as long as she possibly can.
Alongside the main narrative is the off-kilter hipster world in which Greta and Flavia live, which also contains Flavia’s attacker, who is due out of prison on parole. His malevolent presence is somehow more acute for Greta, who, not knowing what he actually looks like, sees him around every corner. Flavia, on the other hand, is suspiciously blasé about his release, to the point of denial.
Greta is a funny narrator, who is frequently bewildered by the situations she willingly inserts herself into, and there is more to Flavia than your typical object of fascination, having opinions and a moral standing that is anything but mutual.
For all the sexual politics and shocking trauma of Big Swiss, it’s mostly a not-even-very-darkly comic tale of later-life self-discovery and the lies we tell ourselves and those close to us to fit in with our own perception of identity.

This was unhinged in the best way. I wasn’t sure what was going on or what was going to happen, but as the story slowly unfolded, I grew attached to Greta and Big Swiss (honestly, what an incredible nickname). I didn’t even mind the deceptive lies that Greta found herself stuck in, and it’s normally something that really stresses me out. I liked Greta’s obsession with Piñon, and I even liked Om?! I found the town and houses really easy to picture as well, but I am just realising now that, in my head, the story takes place in Forkes, and Big Swiss lives in the Cullen’s house. I think that’s just me, though.

4.5

I'm not even going to try to do justice to this book by talking about the plot. All I will say is this book is interesting, memorable and captivating. Some of the scenes are toe-curlingly awkward, the dialogue is understatedly hilarious and it's dark, so dark. But it's brilliant and I immediately want to read it again. It's simply brilliant.

Delightfully weird and utterly compelling, BIG SWISS is a serious page-turner. It’s like the best Ottessa Moshfegh you ever read, crossed with a whole cast of bizarre but endearing characters. A must-read for 2023.

I wanted to enjoy this more than I did - it just felt a bit directionless. However the characters were entertaining in their own way so I don't regret reading it.

Strange, curious, at times confusing but deliberately so. This novel debated the idea that our trauma defines us and our past determines our futures, refuting a simplistic idea of cause and effect which opened up the novel in a way that made it impossible to guess where it was going to go next or why.

The chaos within the ‘unhinged’ protagonist spread across her home, her town and all of her relationships, creating a story that was joyously weird and wide-ranging, and full of unique characters that were captivating precisely because they refused to be explained neatly or to surrender their individual perspectives (it wasn’t just the narrator who was unreliable, it was every single character).

Although the novel encapsulates serious, heavy questions, it remains funny and macabre throughout and it feels impossible to put down.

It took me a while to get into Big Swiss, I couldn't work out where it was going but once I gave up trying to figure that out and just went with it, I began to enjoy it. The main character , Greta is a transcriptionist for a sex therapist and falls in love with one of the clients through listening to and transcribing her sessions. There are some great characters in this and its a weird but entertaining read. I did find it a smidgen too long and felt some parts dragged a little but the characters and humour kept me reading. Overall a 3 star read for me, had it been a bit more tightly paced, I would have loved it.

Greta is a transcriber for a Sex Therapist and she becomes infatuated with a patient (Big Swiss) via her transcripts. They come to meet in real life and embark on an unusual and not entirely honest relationship.

This book was a wild ride.

The main protagonist is obnoxious and offensive, seemingly with intent. Her love interest is equally unlikeable and hard to tolerate. They are both products of pain and trauma. Together they are fascinating as they move at break need speed towards disaster.

The peripheral characters of Om and Sabine are fabulous - this story would be nothing without them. I felt the same about the town of Hudson which is described so cynically it made me laugh out loud.

I did feel some serious issues were dealt with somewhat flippantly so it's important to check the trigger warnings if you're going to pick this up however I do appreciate it's a satire.

The writing is distinctive, fresh and funny.

The story is off the chart wacky.

At times it squeezed my heart, at times it made me laugh, at times it was dark, uncomfortable and disturbing.

I read compulsively until I was done.

It was totally addictive

I haven’t quite managed to finish Big Swiss yet but while I’m torn about how much I like it, I do think I’ll finish reading. It’s hard to tell where the plot is going, and it seems to run in the circles of Greta’s thoughts, but I love the weird and wonderful characters so far.

Big Swiss is going to be a divisive book. It has unlikeable - and often incomprehensible - protagonists, a plot which occasionally meanders into bizarre territory, a lot of nudity and sapphic sex and too many bad decisions to count. So, obviously, I loved it. It was so refreshing to read about an older female protagonist being messy and doing deeply regrettable, cringeworthy things. After reading numerous books about 20 and 30 somethings who feel lost and unsure what to do with their life, it was liberating (and surprisingly) to read a book where a 45 year old woman attempts to drive her life off a cliff. She dumps her stable, loyal boyfriend. She quits her stable, loyal, job. She goes to live with a woman who 'kidnaps' her in a crumbling old house where she sleeps in a cupboard with her dog and seduces a woman who doesn't know who Bruce Springsteen is and carries a carrier bag full of snacks with her at all times (again, deeply relatable.)

Big Swiss is quirky without feeling mannered. I've read so many books featuring 'eccentric' heroines who feel unrealistic or just plain terrible. Greta is a deeply awful person, and yet I sympathised with her and wanted her to get a happy ending, whatever that looked like.

For once, the blurbs are right. Big Swiss will make you laugh. It will make you cry. It will make you hate every single character in it at some point, bar the dog Pinōn (although he does have a habit of killing rabbits and humping other dogs.) Dive in headfirst and enjoy the ride.

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin* is a great addition to the litfic subgenre of messed up female protagonists doing messed up things - think My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Milk Fed etc. Greta is a 45-year-old woman living in a derelict farmhouse in upstate New York. Greta is disenchanted with life for a variety of reasons, not least her massive childhood trauma, and lives somewhat on the fringes of society, marching to the beat of her own drum and eschewing all the trappings of modernity, social norms and commonly accepted conduct.

Despite her best efforts to the contrary, Greta finds herself drawn deeply into the community of her wealthy Hudson Valley enclave when she takes a job as a transcriptionist for an alternative sex therapist named Om. She comes to recognise his local clients by their voices and identifies them by their sexual proclivities when she encounters them around the town which, in truth, leads to some of the funniest parts of the book. Greta becomes especially fascinated by a new patient, Flavia, whom she refers to as Big Swiss (Flavia is tall and, you guessed it, Swiss) and when the two meet by chance at the dog park, they begin an imbalanced and manipulative affair, one where Greta knows everything about Flavia and Flavia thinks Greta’s name is Rebekah.

The characterisation is fantastic, right down to Om, Greta’s housemate Sabine and even Flavia’s dopey husband, and there is some laugh-out-loud funny parts if you enjoy gallows humour, but I found that I was bored at multiple points throughout (I am a mood reader so take this with a grain of salt). I do recommend that you read if you enjoyed either of the earlier mentioned books and I will absolutely be watching the HBO adaption with Jodie Comer as Flavia but, yeah, it just didn’t fully hit the mark for me at this moment in time.

This is a Marmite book: you love it or you hate it but I'm more in the I don't know field. It starts strong, there's humour and Greta is a character you love to hate.
My attention waned as soon as the characters met in real life and I struggled
Even if I wasn't a huge fan of this story I think a lot of people will love it.
3.75 upped to 4
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

I love an unhinged woman as much as the next person, but something about Greta just didn’t draw me in. I didn’t like her character at all, and I felt that her interactions were very stilted, especially with Flavia. The way she was written felt very odd to me, and I don’t know if that was intentional from the author to really drive home how much of a mess Greta is, but it just didn’t work for my liking.

There were also a few casual racist comments thrown in, with no discussion of these whatsoever. I could understand if the author chose to use these phrases and then challenged them with use of another character, but to just let them slide and hope we wouldn’t notice is a step too far in my opinion.

I also think the plot was pretty lacklustre. It was a very character-driven book which is fine, but there has be *some* level of plot to carry a book from start to finish, right?

I really wanted to love this book. I tried hard to make myself find elements I enjoyed as I had seen lots of great reviews going around. I can appreciate the choice of writing style and understand why some people really loved it, but this one just wasn’t for me sadly.