It’s the end of June in New York City and rainbow Pride flags, celebrating LGBTQI month, are whipping wildly from fire-escape balconies, celebrating the metropolitan freedoms of sexual and identity fluidity. Jen Beagin’s hilarious third novel, Big Swiss, embraces this flourishing queer self-determination. A sapphic romp and a satirical examination of urban expatriates living between their dreams and reality, Big Swiss presents a cast of characters who have flown the expense and crowds of Manhattan for the bucolic renaissance of Hudson, a little city set on the east bank of the Hudson River with its own scrappy history of reinvention.
Hudson is as old as the United States, a Revolutionary War hub of maritime commerce. However, in 1850, the construction of a railroad from Albany to New York City made the harbour obsolete and the city languished, only to redefine itself as an industrial centre with bustling ironworks, brickworks, factories and massive cement plants.
By the latter part of the 20th century, industry had fled and the city’s historic buildings surrendered to despair and decay. Once again, Hudson reinvented itself. Gay couples and antique dealers, drawn to the city’s historic bones, renovated the rundown mansions and set up trendy boutiques, cafes and bakeries. Then came the artists and writers who didn’t need to make the daily commute to office jobs. Housing was affordable and it was on the Amtrak Northeast Corridor. Hudson was again the place to be.
It is into this hearth of happenings that Beagin’s heroine Greta lands after living with various aunts around the country following her mother’s death by suicide when Greta was only 13. Numb to her feelings, she wanders into a relationship and enters therapy upon the advice of her straight fiancé. The shrink recommends “hot yoga, hypnosis, primal screaming, eye-movement desensitisation, acupuncture and swing-dancing lessons”. He also recommends she quit caffeine and nicotine. Instead, Greta quits therapy, her job and her relationship, moving across the country and switching careers.
She winds up in Hudson with her rescue dog Piñon and finds a room she can afford in an uninsulated 1737 mansion whose only amenities are electricity and running water. Her landlady is a sorceress named Sabine, who grows marijuana and supports herself by making CBD gummies. There is also a massive beehive above the fireplace “roughly seven feet long and sixteen inches wide … snak[ing] along the length of the joists in a wavy fashion”.
Greta sleeps in an alcove and surrounds herself with drapes and blankets. She also owns advanced recording equipment and finds work transcribing the therapy sessions of a renowned local sex and relationship therapist named Om, who is using those transcriptions to write a book. During her job interview, Om explains that “a wise man once said that Hudson is where the horny go to die, and I’m the only sex therapist in town”.
Greta becomes infatuated with Om’s latest client, who has never experienced an orgasm, and whom she lovingly refers to as “Big Swiss” because of her coldness and vaguely Germanic accent. Both Big Swiss and Greta have tortured histories, and Greta is attracted to Big Swiss’s disassociation of her own trauma.
Of course, they meet cute at the local dog park. Greta recognises her voice, introduces herself with a made-up name, and then goes on to introduce Big Swiss to daily sapphic pleasures, which ultimately heat up Big Swiss’s relationship with her husband. Pleasure turns to obsession and the plot twists until Greta finally engages with her own trauma.
It’s easy to say that in this community of artists and wannabes, serious trauma has become as ubiquitous as croissants and Aperol spritzes, but there is some depth to this libidinous frolic, as well as witty insight into the foibles of the pretentiously unaware.
Ultimately, Big Swiss is great fun, but, like some rib-tickling improvisatory skits, it peters out as the gags become repetitive and the affair loses its steam. Like the city she inhabits, Greta is again on the path to reinvention.
Big Swiss, by Jen Beagin (Faber, $36.99)
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