Unlike Om’s patients in Jen Beagin’s Big Swiss, I was not in sex therapy due to repressed trauma, my penis inverting, or because I was being haunted by Jason Bateman. It was the middle of COVID-19, I was bored, and my student benefits covered it so I simply thought it’d be funny. It was over Zoom that I met with newly-assigned sexpert Kate while lying down on the comfort of my bed as she and I discussed how the porn industry negatively affects women. Although I ended up ghosting Kate after she focused too much on my childhood (sorry Dr. Kate!), I couldn’t help but be thankful that the only transcriptionist I had for my appointments was the Zoom closed captions and not Beagin’s protagonist Greta. Beagin’s novel follows the mind-boggling decisions of Greta, as she strikes up a romantic relationship with the patient of her transcriptionist duties, the aptly named Big Swiss. Beagin constantly has you asking “what the hell is happening” as Greta tries to keep the fact that she knows every detail of Big Swiss’ sex life a secret. It’s weird, sexy, and filled with unlikable characters – the perfect formula for a laugh-out-loud read.

Set in Hudson, New York, Greta is a 40-something-year-old woman who spends her days producing transcripts for Om, the town’s sole sex therapist who can be categorized as the bohemian Freud. She recently called off a decade’s long engagement and needed a change, leading to her move to a decaying farmhouse with an elderly pot dealer named Sabine. While listening to Om’s recordings, Greta auditorily meets Flavia – a woman in her late twenties whose husband and own right hand can’t make her orgasm. Greta instantly nicknames her Big Swiss, as she is tall and has a slight accent from her childhood in Switzerland. Greta lives in her fantasies about Big Swiss until they run into each other at a dog park – the town is small after all. Flavia, a gynecologist, realizes that she is attracted to women after meeting Greta and they begin a secret relationship. Greta attempts to balance all of her secrets, as she juggles hiding her relationship with Flavia from Om whilst simultaneously hiding her work with Om from Flavia. It is complicated, to say the least.

Big Swiss is a provocative story that deals with complex and multifaceted characters who live in the gray space of what is good and what is bad as they find purpose through their hilarious and morally dubious affair. Beagin’s lively writing style works to balance the line between feminist literary fiction and just straight-up, laugh-out-loud humor. We are privy to Greta’s interior life where she makes interesting observations of the characters around her, such as when she describes wondering “how many of Om’s bones were gay.” She settles on the answer being “one or two.” While this is just one short line from the novel, it speaks to how Greta’s narration bares all thoughts even if she would never utter them out loud. The supporting cast of Hudson, and Beagin’s ability to create unique storylines for all of them, also stands out. For NEM (initials only please – Greta needs to give some pretense of patient confidentiality) it is her fantasizing about Jason Bateman – yes that Jason Bateman as in Michael Bluth, the subtly creepy husband from Juno and the maybe attractive fox from Zootopia (don’t hold it against me). However, he is not a subject of more illicit fantasies, instead, he pops into her brain to save her from moments such as when her husband says awkward things such as telling her she “smelled like an aquarium supply store in Chinatown.” There is also AAG who describes going down on his wife with a napkin over his head. The technicalities of this, I don’t quite understand, but the visual is definitely amusing. 

Often people compare Beagin’s raunchy and humorous writing to another beloved writer of the unhinged women genre, Ottessa Moshfegh, but I find this comparison to be thin. Moshfegh’s writing drips with satire, her protagonists and her writing half-dead. In her bestselling novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation, the protagonist literally spends 200+ pages overmedicated and half-asleep. While this is still enjoyable to consume, Beagin’s writing offers a sharp contrast, as her words and characters shine with life and absurdity. Greta, in comparison to Moshfegh’s unnamed protagonist, purposefully causes drama in her life with hope of excitement. Greta is eccentric and uninhibited, as she helps her fifty-something year-old neighbour Sabine sell weed and spends her days romancing married Flavia in a dog park. Beagin’s writing style takes the form of a ridiculous romantic comedy, while Moshfegh occupies the very specific sphere of literary satire.

Another striking aspect of Beagin’s novel is her unpretentious exploration of sex. Gone are the days of writing every beautiful caress found in love-making. Beagin obsesses over removing the emphasis on tenderness and instead highlights the funny, awkward weirdness of two people baring it all to each other – physically and emotionally. Greta personifies vaginas, characterizing Flavia’s area as “very…Swiss,” classifying it as “an uptight perfectionist.” She outlines the Millennial obsession with anal sex, and jumps to take non-consensual photos of her partner’s genitals. There are no lulls in Greta’s world, just a strong interior world with questionable choices. Greta’s character forces you to take a good, big look at yourself, and with that, you realize that in comparison to the people of Hudson, you are practically Pope Francis. It is Beagin’s witty narrative voice and the blurred lines of morality that drive this novel, and make you unable to put it down. A novel that disturbs the spicy romance genre with a transgressive and comedic spin on queer relationships, Big Swiss is a novel that takes your attention hostage and refuses to let it go.

Buried under numerous academic readings and self-involved novels for my graduate program, Big Swiss, in its entertaining, uncomfortable and vibrant glory, felt like a saving grace. Throughout my first read, right in the middle of finals season, I forced myself to ration the book so I could linger in Greta’s brain for as long as possible. Three chapters one night, four chapters the next. My attempts at rationing the material was unsuccessful, as I drowned myself in Beagin’s humor and questionable characters. From the moment I put down the book, it left me itching for more and I have been wanting to revisit the world of Hudson and the wide set of personalities as imagined by Beagin. She works to disturb the genre of literary fiction, offering a bright alternative that is both accessible and innovative.