44 pages • 1 hour read
Jen BeaginBig Swiss
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Greta begins the novel by describing a tall woman from Switzerland, whom she calls “Big Swiss,” whose “beauty was like Switzerland itself—stunning, but sterile” (1). Greta hasn’t met Big Swiss in person but has heard her voice. Greta’s job is to listen to tapes of clients’ sessions with a sex and relationship therapist named Om, and to transcribe these sessions so that Om can write a book.
Greta used to work at a pharmacy. A man pulled a gun on her for drugs at the pharmacy, then died of an overdose two days later. Just after that, the pharmacist she worked with, Hopper, died by suicide. Greta’s fiancé Stacy was concerned that Greta would be upset by Hopper’s death because her own mother had died by suicide. Greta agreed to go to therapy at Stacy’s behest, where she was diagnosed with emotional detachment disorder. Greta was perturbed by this diagnosis; she quit therapy, broke up with her fiancé, moved to Hudson, and change careers after the diagnosis. Her new job transcribing therapy sessions keeps her secluded indoors, which she prefers. Greta is attracted to Big Swiss’s voice, and she suspects that Om finds Big Swiss beautiful because he had not turned the recorder on until well into their first conversation. Because he hadn’t turned the recorder on earlier in the session, Big Swiss and Om discuss a trauma that Greta is unaware of.
Big Swiss insists to Om that the trauma hasn’t influenced her feelings. She refuses to identify herself with her trauma. Om agrees that Big Swiss can do what she wants with her trauma but encourages her to address it directly first in order to make those decisions. Big Swiss tells Om that she’s not meeting with him to discuss her trauma. She’s there because she’s a gynecologist, she’s been married for six years, yet has never had an orgasm; it had been her husband’s idea for her to go see a sex therapist about it. Big Swiss calls her trauma “the beating.”
Greta’s dilapidated home has a honeybee infestation. She lives in a house in the countryside with a roommate named Sabine. The honeybees are protected by a hatch put in place by Sabine. Greta suspects that Sabine suffers from anorexia. When Greta asks her, Sabine says she probably has cancer, which could explain her rapid weight loss.
Greta continues her transcription of Big Swiss’s session. Big Swiss wants to have children, but she believes erroneously that an orgasm will help her conceive. Om proposes that Big Swiss knows herself intellectually but not emotionally, which is getting in her way. He tries to revisit “the beating.” Big Swiss tells him that the perpetrator is being released from prison next month after an eight-year incarceration.
When Greta first met Om to interview for the job, he noted her beauty and her past as a model. He had asked her if she would be comfortable signing a confidentiality agreement. Though Greta agreed to do so, she has an aversion to official documents, so much so that she doesn’t file her taxes. Om explained to her that Hudson is a small community where people know one another’s business, so it’s important that she keep people’s secrets hidden. Greta finds Hudson to often be superficial and full of narcissists.
Chapter 2 Summary
Greta arrives at the coffeeshop underneath Om’s office for a meeting with him. She can recognize the voices of the patients from the transcripts, though she only knows them through their coded names. Om arrives for their meeting and warns Greta that the next set of tapes for Big Swiss contain highly triggering details of Big Swiss’s assault. The man who committed the assault is being released from prison and is from Hudson, and he is named in the tapes. Greta asks Om if she can transcribe the pauses in his sessions to emphasize someone’s emotional state. Om wants her to be transcriptive, not descriptive. Om tells her he believes she’ll meet someone in her love life in January, next month.
Greta isn’t ready for a relationship, but she wouldn’t mind hooking up. In Hudson, everyone dates one another, often switching between relationships. Greta had “heard Hudson described as a college town without a college, or summer camp for adults, but it seemed more like a small community of expats” (33). When Greta had first moved in with Sabine, who is an old friend of hers, Greta had not yet gotten the job with Om and occupied herself writing notes to her long-dead mother. Greta spent time with Sabine’s father Seymour and Sabine’s 20-year-old adopted son, Mateo. Seymour was attracted to Greta, but Greta was attracted to Mateo. Greta feels guilty about being mean to Seymour and for desiring her friend’s son.
Chapter 3 Summary
Greta had been engaged to a man named Stacy for 10 years. They met in Los Angeles when Greta was a waitress. She was instantly attracted to Stacy’s voice and thick Boston accent. On their first date, she had told him the tragic details of her mother’s death by suicide, her father’s incarceration for impersonating a police officer, and her father’s chaotic and toxic relationships with women. Greta is still haunted by a lock of her mother’s hair, attached to a piece of her mother’s scalp, which the cleaners had missed when they cleaned up after the suicide. Greta had found it and kept it in a shoebox. The night she found the piece of scalp and hair, Greta had started scratching at her own scalp as though she had lice. The itch never went away. She liked that Stacy wasn’t scared off by her past, and also that he, like her, didn’t want children.
Greta had moved in with Stacy quickly. Stacy took care of the bills and nurtured Greta’s creativity and desires. They adopted a dog together named Piñon, which Greta took when she moved. Greta loves Piñon and had “never known such pure and uncomplicated love” (64). Greta’s relationship with Stacy had been idyllic, but she began craving independence and space.
Chapter 4 Summary
Greta begins her next transcript of Big Swiss’s therapy session. Big Swiss tells Om about Keith. Big Swiss met Keith when she was 20 years old, working as a cocktail waitress in Brooklyn while attending college. Keith was much older than her and invited her to dinner, where he told her about his incarceration of 11 years for stalking his ex-wife’s girlfriend. Keith invited Big Swiss back to his house, but when she got there, she realized that it was a half-way house and not his own. He tried kissing her, but she rejected him. He beat her brutally then sent her away, keeping her phone and wallet. She went to the hospital and the police were alerted.
Chapter 5 Summary
Greta transcribes other sessions but can’t get Big Swiss’s voice out of her head. A couple, Ryan and Nicole, comes by the house to buy weed from Sabine. Greta recognizes their voices from Om’s therapy tapes. They each see Om individually and discuss their emotional and sexual issues within the relationship. Greta connects with Nicole on her history of sexual assault and dead mothers, but she can’t say this aloud and befriend Nicole. In her sessions, Nicole tells Om about how whenever something stressful happens to her, she pictures Jason Bateman. Greta can’t help but to tell Nicole that she reminds her of Jason Bateman. Greta is thrilled by Nicole’s shock, but quickly tells her to forget she said anything.
The rain from outside comes into Greta’s bedroom. She writes a letter to her mother, confessing her own suicidal ideations and wondering why she can’t hold on to important objects. Greta texts Om about bringing up Jason Bateman with Nicole. Om wants Greta to keep her work for him private, but he encourages her to develop a friendship with Nicole.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
In the first chapters of Big Swiss, Beagin introduces her protagonist Greta, whose attachments and detachments with other people inform much of her characterization. Greta’s early characterization introduces the themes of Physical and Psychological Trauma and The Complexity of Human Connection. The inciting incident of the plot—Greta breaking up with her fiancé, moving, and changing careers–was motivated by her frustrations with a therapist, who diagnosed her with emotional detachment disorder. Emotional detachment disorder is when a person can’t fully engage with their feelings or the feelings of others. Ironically, Greta’s rejection of the diagnosis is in itself a symptom of emotional detachment disorder, as it indicates that Greta can’t fully engage with her feelings. Greta literally flees from the idea that she can be emotionally detached. Greta can’t help but play Nicole’s emotions by bringing up Jason Bateman, whom Nicole talks about in her therapy sessions. This suggests and further supports that Greta struggles to respect other people’s feelings and fully understand and empathize with them. Greta’s trauma shapes the actions she takes, while her detachment from others encourages her voyeurism and makes it difficult for her to establish human connections. Greta’s relationship with the voices she transcribes are her only meaningful connections, but as a voyeur and not a participant.
Greta’s suppressed traumas and resulting isolation emphasize Beagin’s theme of Physical and Psychological Trauma. It is easier to project her feelings onto Big Swiss’s voice than it is to have real human conversations. Greta claims that what happened at the pharmacy didn’t bring back past traumas, but shortly after that event she changed her entire life. This suggests that Greta cannot be fully honest with herself and her emotions. Greta has also been a victim of sexual assault, and this makes her projection of herself onto the therapy sessions she transcribes further problematic for herself. In not seeking therapy herself but in overhearing therapy that other people are going through, Greta falsely relates herself to certain patients. Greta uses the real human connections and self-reflection of others as a proxy for her own connections and self-reflection.
Om’s new-age therapy and Greta’s transcriptions pose ethical dilemmas concerning Manipulation and Power Dynamics. Big Swiss is insistent that her trauma isn’t what’s bothering her in her current life. She prefers to think of the trauma as something that happened to her in the past and doesn’t want that trauma to identify her. Even so, Om insists that she confront that trauma. What Big Swiss wants to keep secret and private, her trauma, becomes not only Om’s story but Greta’s as well. They both become a part of Big Swiss’s story by hearing her story. Greta’s job is to transcribe the sessions, yet she becomes implicated in something that Big Swiss wishes to keep private above all else. Om wants to write a book using his patients’ most vulnerable secrets, while Greta will leverage her knowledge about Big Swiss’s biggest secret when their relationship begins. Both characters are unable to separate their own desires from a manipulation of Big Swiss’s desires for privacy.
The setting of Hudson is an important factor in this story. Hudson is a small town that Greta characterizes as being like a small “community of expats.” The implications of this characterization are that Hudson is well-to-do and full of people escaping some other past life that no longer serves them. The town is gossipy yet tight knit. The people of Hudson are liberal with their sex lives, drug use, and opinions. They are the type of people who love therapy, so Om serves many members of the community. Greta lives in Hudson thanks to her friend Sabine, but Greta’s own quirks and lifestyle make her a fit in a town characterized by its charming oddity.
