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A review by imogenrose97
Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Both hilarious and gut twistingly tense, Big Swiss holds you over the precipice of a catastrophe coming from too many sides to count. Everyone is either lying, stalking or hiding something from someone else and I couldn't tell which fallout would be the worst.
At face value, Big Swiss is a story of an ill advised affair, though aren't they all, this one to be fair is ill advised on more than one front. I don't think I expected to be so confronted by mistakes I have made myself, mistakes that you aren't told are mistakes until you are too deep to turn back, mistakes I think society should take more responsibility for righting. I wont go into these mistakes as I think that they'll be too much of a spoiler for the true narrative of the book. The unexplained heart.
I found the discussions around trauma so interesting, "victims say all trauma is equal and I hate that" was a particularly difficult to navigate quote, the space that those who have experienced trauma try to make for those around them to me is deeply beautiful, there is no way for trauma to be measured and something happening to one person could be completely, and validly, interpreted so differently than someone else. I think that Big Swiss was so caught in not letting her experience shape her that she let it become so much larger of an issue. Greta however embodies the victim, she has not processed the trauma that shaped her, she allows it to inform all her decisions. Both responses make perfect sense under the lens of trauma, its what they do with it now that is important.
At face value, Big Swiss is a story of an ill advised affair, though aren't they all, this one to be fair is ill advised on more than one front. I don't think I expected to be so confronted by mistakes I have made myself, mistakes that you aren't told are mistakes until you are too deep to turn back, mistakes I think society should take more responsibility for righting. I wont go into these mistakes as I think that they'll be too much of a spoiler for the true narrative of the book. The unexplained heart.
I found the discussions around trauma so interesting, "victims say all trauma is equal and I hate that" was a particularly difficult to navigate quote, the space that those who have experienced trauma try to make for those around them to me is deeply beautiful, there is no way for trauma to be measured and something happening to one person could be completely, and validly, interpreted so differently than someone else. I think that Big Swiss was so caught in not letting her experience shape her that she let it become so much larger of an issue. Greta however embodies the victim, she has not processed the trauma that shaped her, she allows it to inform all her decisions. Both responses make perfect sense under the lens of trauma, its what they do with it now that is important.