Ava Pusztai, Contributor | 

Published in 2023, Big Swiss follows the life of a middle-aged woman named Greta.

Separated from her partner, she earns her living transcribing therapy sessions for the local sex therapist who is only ever known as Om. The woman—Greta—is isolated and is characterized by engaging in self-destructive behaviour without being consciously aware of it.

The book examines the obsessive nature of the human mind as Greta becomes infatuated with one of Om’s clients whom she calls Big Swiss. Greta eventually goes against her legal contract and befriends Big Swiss, and the two begin sleeping together. Bringing forward the questions of morality, infidelity and ethics, this novel is an exploration of life, love and sex.

Greta knows everything about everyone in the sleepy city of Hudson, New York. When she takes a rare walk outside, she recognizes at least half a dozen voices. At the beginning of the book, she ventures into public twice and in both instances she recognizes people who do not know her at all.

“She didn’t know him personally, but a piece of his transcript came to her…His initials were AAG, and he was sleeping with his sister-in-law,” writes Beagin on pages 26 and 27.

Despite this, Greta is bound by a confidentiality agreement which prevents her from interacting with any of these people. This doesn’t prove to be overly difficult as Greta is an isolated hermit who has one faithful friend—her dog Piñon. From this, Greta fulfills her need for companionship by living through the transcripts and thus develops a parasocial relationship with Big Swiss.

I found the book had an interesting example of a parasocial relationship. Defined as one member of the partnership knowing everything the other has offered to the public eye, and the other is a stranger learning everything for the first time. In the context of the novel, Big Swiss is not releasing her information publicly, rather Greta is getting it from her therapy sessions as a mere extension.

Human relationships [are] pure folly, because nothing [is] ever perfectly mutual. One person always liked or loved the other person a little more than they were liked or loved…it was never, ever equal, and that was pretty much the only thing you could count on in life,” writes Beagin.

This quote sums up the parasocial aspect of the novel in less than a paragraph. I am unsure if this quote is true in reality. It is more a representation of how Greta comforts herself in her relationship choices than an anecdote about average human nature. Part of the reason Greta stays so close to Big Swiss is because she has the upper hand in their dynamic, even though she never admits it–much like her narcissistic tendencies.

Interacting with her becomes intoxicating and Greta finds herself tumbling to the point of no return because of her fascination with a woman she’s never truly met. With her obsessive nature and desires, Greta convinces herself that she will tell Big Swiss the truth about their dynamic.

The private information Greta holds over Big Swiss aids her attraction and the unique power imbalance established in their partnership. Technically, Big Swiss has given consent to share the details of her private life—but not to Greta. Their whole relationship is built on a lie, Greta even going as far as to lie about her name. The intimacy the women share is their one reason for returning to each other even though both are aware that what they are doing is wrong.

Wrong in many ways—Greta for legal reasons, and Big Swiss for moral reasons as she is married and attempting to have a child.

Greta is naturally a flawed female protagonist, which is always refreshing during the “girlboss” movement we see in any media outlet. I found Greta to be a more enjoyable “femcel” archetype, in which women blame their personal failures (romantic, career, etc.) on relationships they hold with men. The archetype toes a thin line as I find it can either be done horribly or humorously, as is found in Big Swiss.

For me, in order to write a successful femcel archetype, there has to be an element of satire. Authors struggle to write female characters as layered beings. Even when attempting to criticize something like incel culture, the women frequently remain one-dimensional or throw them into this recent movement in media that shows women can also be narrow-minded and insecure beings. Often, it comes out as a more misogynistic take as opposed to a critical one; it is a very difficult aspect to write about in a way that is clever and introspective. Big Swiss uses the archetype to its advantage as it propels the plot forward but does not consume the entire novel.

In comparison, My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh exercises this archetype in a way I found to be sloppy, insufferable and juvenile. All I learnt about her as a character throughout the entire novel was that she had depression and as such, everyone should feel sorry for her because she has an excuse to be a horrible person.

Greta does not carry this attitude, rather Greta may not outwardly admit that she is a self-destructive narcissist, but she also does not complain about her life being terrible. She understands that her overall life and mood are at status quo because she is avoiding everything that causes this behaviour in herself. It is not until the end of the book that Greta openly admits that she is a narcissist.

Greta’s development in the novel is stunted, and I will admit that. However, she at least learns what is causing her halt in development and where to turn next by taking accountability. She is not surprised by the way her life has turned out because she knows she is the one responsible for it.

Is something like love an ethical practice in this sense? Both women are bound by agreements with other people, and they are lying to either themselves or those around them. What happens when intimacy becomes confined and how strong is the human brain in these situations? Big Swiss holds an interesting argument told through bizarre humour and satire as a woman begins a new transition in her adult life after believing she was all grown up.