![]() ![]() ![]() But the city of Hudson, where the story takes place, is a very small place, and it never takes long for Greta to match up Om's ostensibly anonymous clients with their real-life counterparts. She regularly creates such signifiers for Om's patients, whose true identities are withheld from her. Greta nicknames her Big Swiss, because she is originally from Switzerland. Greta is discreet with these secrets for the most part-she needs the work and does not want to jeopardize her gig by blabbing-but she finds herself fixating on the title character, a much younger, married gynecologist who, oddly and tantalizingly, has never had an orgasm. This gives Greta direct access to the innermost thoughts and secrets of Om's patients and also provides Beagin-the recipient of a 2017 Whiting Award for fiction-with an innovative narrative device, wherein the reader is made privy to the transcripts of the sessions as Greta types them up. Whereas the latter snooped around her clients' homes and through their belongings, Greta does a different kind of snooping: She transcribes therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. With Big Swiss, Jen Beagin leaves behind Mona, the house-cleaning protagonist of her first two novels, Pretend I'm Dead and Vacuum in the Dark, in favor of Greta, a worthy and no less loveable successor to Mona. ![]()
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