Big Swiss

A Novel

De: Jen Beagin

Narrado por: Rebecca Lowman, Carlotta Brentan, Stephen Graybill, Joy Osmanski, Matt Pittenger

Duración: 11 h y 16 m

Resumen del Editor

NATIONAL BESTSELLER AND CULT FAVORITE

Named a Best Book of the Year by the New Yorker, Time, NPR, Vogue, Elle, Cosmopolitan, Huffington Post, NBC News, Lit Hub, theSkimm, Condé Nast Traveler, Town & Country, and more!

“One of the funniest books of the last few years” (Los Angeles Times) about a sex therapist’s transcriptionist and her affair with one of the patients.

Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. The house is unrenovated, uninsulated, and full of bees. Greta spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss.

One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship…

“A fantastic, weird-as-hell, super funny novel” (Bustle), Big Swiss is both a love story and a deft examination of infidelity, mental health, sexual stereotypes, and more—from an amazingly talented, singular voice in contemporary fiction.

©2023 Jen Beagin. All rights reserved. (P)2023 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

All over the place and going nowhere

Performers did a great job. Story-wise I was excited for the premise here, it sounded like a rom-com setup but darker and more twisted. Post-listen, if you asked me what this book was about, I couldn’t tell you. Felt like the author changed their mind once or twice about what they were writing while they were writing it. An author can make up for this with great prose that is rewarding regardless of the story…this one doesn’t.

Such a unique story and characters

The plot was interesting and unexpected, I loved Greta and big Swiss, it was all weird and very real to me

Absolutely intoxicating

It’s been quite some time since a book drew me in like this. It’s beautifully written and is somehow epic and strangely ordinary at once… this book is a very beautiful piece and I will buy the physical book and read it again. I didn’t find it “funny” in terms of laughing out loud but rather funny in the way it illustrates human absurdities, which did make me smile. I couldn’t stop listening. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but it was most certainly mine.

One of my favourites

This and The Guncle are comedic gold. Excellent narration and story with the narration perhaps my favorite ever!

Fascinating characters

Original story with fascinating characters I didn’t know where the story was going sometimes funny sometimes sad sometimes sexual but the characters were fascinating

Trauma dumping

I really enjoyed it! The characters seemed true to themselves and the performance was great by the reader! I love that everyone has there own mental hurdle they need to get over. It was trauma dump after trauma dump. But if felt true to Greta to over share in that way. It also felt like a lot of Greta’s long monologs and rants she go on are super poetic in her description making it feel like she writing a letter instead of talking. really enjoyed it felt it did drag a little with the descriptions but loved the humor LOLed quite a lot!

Adventures of a Bitter Gen X Karen

I have mixed feelings about this book but most of my feelings can be boiled down to: huh? A generally unlikeable cast with a deeply unlikeable and at times unreliable narrator. Greta (the MC) is bitter, repressed, rude, likes animals over humans, makes racist jokes but mostly mentally, and starts an affair with a married woman who doesn’t seem to like her very much. I ended up getting hooked into the story but in the end it kinda feels like it was all for nothing. But Greta’s life feels like that, and she’s traumatized, so I guess that’s the point? Idk. Weird & disappointing w/ a couple questionable moments that gave me the ick.

Great sultry reading

Big Swiss Big Swiss Big Swiss!!!! I don’t know why I need to say more to submit this reciew

12/10

From cover to cover this book gives and gives, while also effing you up and leaving you different after reading. Not like a different person, but as if someone came in and rearranged a room… and maybe it makes more sense now?

I had heard this book hyped up and that always makes me a little skeptical, but no, this book is that good.

If you are an audiobook reader - this one gets bonus points for the narrators’ voices all being like butter.

what a romp!!

Ridiculous! Silly! Raunchy! A comedic romp of a story! It was noted as “Cosmopolitan’s Best Book of the Year”…need I say more?

“The Big Swiss” is a farcical tale about a woman who works as a transcriber for a sex therapist/coach in Hudson, NY. She sits in her dilapidated farmhouse, which is full of bees, stink bugs, spiders and maggots, transcribing other people’s sexual fetishes and issues. She’s single, bisexual, and adrift.

Hudson is a small community in which everyone recognizes everyone else. Greta, the transcriber, can recognize people by their voices, which adds to the silliness. For example, she clocks a guy at her coffee shop as the guy who describes his penis as “Darth Vader in a turtleneck.” One particular client of the sex coach is a woman from Switzerland who is seeing the therapist because she’s never achieved an orgasm. Greta has nicknamed her “Big Swiss”. The story takes off when Greta is at a dog park and an unknown dog aggressively attacks her tiny dog. As she’s panicking, this beautiful blonde comes along and saves her dog. Once the blonde opens her mouth, Greta knows it’s Big Swiss. Of course, Greta infiltrates herself into Big Swiss’s life, and it’s hysterical.

This is a raunchy sex comedy, one that I’m not sure I want to admit that I not only listened to, but laughed out loud at while listening. The blatant sexual content was a bit much for me at times. Yes, I’m a senior so I get a pass at the “blushing” thing. But there was more than the fluffy comedy. There are dark issues and trauma explored. Greta was raised by her aunts after her mother committed suicide. Big Swiss was attacked and left for dead, something she continues to recover from, especially after her attacker is released from prison. Even Greta’s roommate has a sad backstory.

I can attest that this is an interesting work in that the major dark themes explored are sparsely sprinkled amid silly gags. In other words, it’s a romp of a slapstick comedy with dark undercurrents, which one doesn’t realize immediately.

I chose the audio format, which used very talented narrators: Rebecca Lowman, Carlotta Brentan, Stephen Graybill, Joy Osmanski, and Matt Pittenger. This farse was made possible by the narrator’s talents. Every voice was perfect. Highly recommended if you don’t mind major 🌶️, some crude. Not for the faint of heart!!