Big Swiss

For about the first half of this book, I thought it was funny, but as the story progressed, I changed my mind. This is not the comic novel the blurbs want you to think it is. Greta is on the run from some painful truths about her life, which is how she ends up in a little Hudson Valley tourist town, transcribing recorded coaching sessions for a self annointed sex and relationship coach. She is captivated by the voice and “aura” of one of the coaching clients, a woman she calls Big Swiss. When she meets Big Swiss in person by accident, she lies about her name and occupation, which presents problems as they become romantically and sexually entangled.

The town of Hudson reminds me of my college town in Massachusetts, with its “town vs. gown” dynamic, abundance of suspect people in the “healing” business, and large population of people who are there for a short time and then leave forever (students or tourists). Partly because of that, and partly because the precarious, patched together life that Greta is living seems more like a college student's than a woman in her 40's, I kept being surprised at references to Greta's age.

Unsurprisingly, things don't go well for Greta, and Greta makes them worse for herself before the novel is over. The aspects of the book that seemed funny at the beginning seem much more like sad bravado by the end. If I look at the book this way, without expecting it to be funny, I like certain aspects of it much more. The character of Sabine, who is absent for much of the action, is much wiser than she seems at first. I also appreciated the character of the beehive, which inhabits the old farmhouse where Greta and Sabine live.