At one point, Greta hears Big Swiss refer to her as a “broken toy” during a therapy session. Big Swiss is occasionally spooked by Greta’s seeming clairvoyance about her life. There’s an age difference, and a class difference, not to mention Greta’s eavesdropper position in the relationship. Greta herself is, by her own admission, “a little suicidal.” Their sapphic entanglement is a consuming affair, both literally and figuratively, though the nourishment that each gets from the other is undeniably lopsided. Both Greta and Big Swiss (née Flavia) have experienced significant trauma in their lives-Greta’s mother died by suicide when she was thirteen Big Swiss was severely beaten by a man who’s about to be released after serving eight years in prison for the crime. But Beagin has more on her mind than mere social satire. If it all sounds like the setup for a classic comedy of errors, it sort of is. When the two meet by chance at a dog park, Greta recognizes her voice and invents a false identity on the spot. Not easily boiled down or buttered up.” She also tells fibs with an instinctual frequency, which may be in part why a particularly candid female patient, on whom Greta bestows the titular nickname, draws her notice.
Her personality, in her own words, is akin to a kohlrabi: “Not very approachable. Having moved cross-country after breaking up with the fiancé she strung along for ten years, she currently lives in a dilapidated farmhouse with her old friend Sabine and a substantial beehive in the basement. It’s a strange space to inhabit, but Greta is accustomed to strange spaces. This means she knows both too much about the people around her and nothing at all, privy to their most vulnerable secrets but prevented by NDA from revealing her information. In the meantime, she’s working as a transcriptionist for a sex therapist who calls himself Om in Hudson, New York, spending her evenings listening to the audio recordings of his sessions. Greta, the protagonist of Jen Beagin’s third novel, Big Swiss, isn’t an author in the traditional sense, though she professes a vague intention to be one. It’s also, incidentally, how readers first come to know authors, albeit through the written word rather than the spoken one. Nursing these illusory attractions is something of a lost art in our modern technological age of social media and online dating, which can make it seem all the more romantic. We pay attention to how they express themselves and tell stories, and adjust our portraits accordingly-maybe a strong-sounding person grows more muscles in our minds a woman prone to sarcasm hides her face behind glasses. We form an identikit based on an accent or a specific intonation, or how they mispronounce a certain word.
To hear a person without seeing them allows our imaginations to flourish.
There is something uniquely intimate about getting to know someone through their voice.
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