Jessica Woodbury's Reviews > Big Swiss

Oh boy did I enjoy this book. On paper it sounds like it might drive me up the wall, like the kind of weird that veers towards quirky and maybe even twee. And Greta sounds like she could be the most annoying kind of mess, one who isn't so messy that you can't look away but just messy enough to constantly irk you with her bad decisions. But no. Somehow it all worked for me spectacularly.

The reason it works is that it's all there for a reason. The 300 year old farmhouse Greta lives in has a new horror every page. And not just the horrors of the lack of insulation in upstate NY. These are horrors like an entire beehive living in the structure of the house. You keep stumbling on more and more of these, and eventually you want to scream. How can anyone live like this? It is the same with Sabine, Greta's friend and quasi-landlord, who sees all of this as either entirely normal or completely delightful. But this isn't just all there to be set dressing. It isn't just the cute small town vibes. Greta is here because of who Greta is and Greta tolerates it, even welcomes it, for reasons we gradually discover over the course of the book. That's the real genius of it. Not all the quirk, but the Greta of it all, the peeling back of layer after layer.

Sometimes protagonists who constantly make bad choices give me so much anxiety I can't keep reading. Somehow Greta never did that to me. Even though her choices are absolutely misguided and destined for disaster. Maybe because it was so enjoyable to watch Greta fall in love/become obsessed with the titular character whose actual name is Flavia but who you only ever think of as Big Swiss.

Greta and Big Swiss are a classic case of opposites attract. Different ages, different backgrounds, different temperaments. Big Swiss has herself entirely together while Greta is the aforementioned mess. But something about them--Big Swiss perpetually frank, Greta perpetually unexpected--works. Of course it isn't simple. Big Swiss is married. Oh and there's the part where Greta hasn't told her that she is Big Swiss's therapist's transcriber and thus has heard all of her most intimate secrets.

At first I wondered how Greta could be in her late 40's and still be such a mess. By the end I didn't wonder anymore, I understood. And we start to see the possibility that maybe Greta could be a better version of herself if she wants to be. The question is, does she want to be?

Somehow I have not yet mentioned how darkly funny this book is. The prose is punchy and delightful.

And I absolutely must say how enjoyable I found the writing about sex and bodies. The only downside of listening to it on audio instead of reading in print was that I can't just flip to a page and quote to you a perfect little example.

The audio is particularly good, an excellent use of multiple readers which works very well in the transcription sections. The primary narrator really gets Beagin's humor, you don't always have readers helping a book be even more funny but this time you do. Lucky us.