Big Swiss must've spent at least a year on my TBR list, so the other week I decided to finally pick it up and read it in about three or four days.
I enjoyed the writing style and how the author used words, how she'd set up situations, and also how original the initial idea of the novel was, but… I feel like I really missed something, while reading. Everybody was insane but not in a way that was "organic" to the plot (like in Earthlings, for example) but more in a "the author desperately wanted her characters to be quirky" one.
The descriptions of the house where Greta lives get crazier the more the book goes on, enough so that it becomes clear that the author really wanted her characters to live in an eccentric sort of poverty but doesn't really have an idea of how poor people live so she spun a wheel and landed on "falling windowpanes," "stink bugs everywhere," "a rotting apple orchard in the backyard," "concrete floors." I realized midway through the book that her idea of poverty reminded me a lot of how it was presented in The Selection by Kiera Cass: a rich person's idea of poverty, with characters who think that poverty equates to having small tree houses instead of, you know, food insecurity.
I understood the nature of Greta's obsession for Big Swiss and, in a way, also how Big Swiss attaches herself to Greta (first gay relationship, Greta anticipates her every thought, they're completely opposites of one another, etc), but the way their relationship was presented just… left me baffled?
They had nothing to talk about, and most times they did talk about something, it was Greta rambling and Flavia telling her she was being annoying. The dinner with Flavia's husband was also very weird and none of the characters acted like humans, either insulting one another in the weirdest fashion or acting borderline unhinged.
Also, at no point I expected this book to be smutty or sexy, but the sex described was downright painful sounding, and the constant use of coconut oil as lube gave me UTI nightmares.
While reading, I couldn't but feel like this book was structured a bit like the fanfiction of a very juvenile writer: the first few chapters are engaging because they are written with a clear idea in mind, then they lose steam and become little more than characters in this or that situation, and then, towards the end, the author loses interest completely and wraps up whatever they can remember, leaving threads open and situations unsolved. Except that's fanfic and Big Swiss is a published book.
I don't know, I feel like I might've missed something, because the reviews I see of it on Goodreads and TikTok keep referring it as being hilarious and visceral, while I just ended up finding it annoying.
by screamingracoon