Are women (novelists) okay?
This is my second novel in a row, following Emma Cline’s The Guest, in which a female novelist seems to revel in writing a completely irredeemable female protagonist. If a man had written a woman so despicable, so gross, so selfish and stupid and cruel, I feel like cancellation wouldn’t even begin to cover it. People would be calling for jail time.
The protagonist of Big Swiss is Greta Work, a 45-year-old woman who has just moved to smalltown Hudson, NY after ending a lengthy engagement. She lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient, deplorable home which is seemingly falling apart and has constant infestations in addition to an active beehive in the attic. Having never really settled on a career path, she bluffs her way into a job transcribing the sessions of a new-agey sex and relationship coach who re-christened himself Om after a trip to India, despite being a white man named Bruce.
If this is all starting to feel a little implausible, just wait. Because Hudson is such a small town, Greta soon finds herself recognizing Om’s patients around town, getting a little voyeuristic thrill out of knowing their innermost secrets. One patient in particular is a woman Greta has taken to calling Big Swiss. She is, appropriately, an immigrant from Switzerland. She’s also a statuesque gynecologist who is much younger than Greta. Big Swiss wants Om’s help despite being deeply cynical about therapy in general and Om’s practice in particular. It doesn’t take long for Greta to become obsessed with her.
What proceeds is some of the most abhorrent human behavior ever committed to the printed page. Greta crosses every boundary, every ethical line imaginable, in order to get closer to Big Swiss. Her lack of introspection as she does so is hard to take.
If Greta were just a bad person, the novel might be workable, but Beagin also wallows in her dysfunctional behavior. Greta just barely takes care of herself, constantly allowing small problems to grow into huge problems out of some combination of laziness and self-loathing. The reader spends most of the book suppressing the urge to yell at her to just do something already.
There is, of course, trauma involved. Severe trauma, at that. And Beagin satisfies the modern requirement of leaving the full extent of said trauma as a final-act reveal meant to cast a light on all that has come before. But Beagin has made Greta too obnoxious, too unsalvageable, for any sympathy on the part of the reader to excuse or even partly explain all the things she has done.