SEPT 5, 2024 | ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT | By Esa George
On the shelves of United’s LAX Terminal 7 Hudson News store, on my way to New York City, I encountered a very June display of books flooding into the busy terminal hallways; advertised in large letters as, “Celebrate Pride Month.”
I first clocked Hanya Yanagihara’s “A Little Life,” and thought to myself something along the lines of: I ought to stick a warning sign onto every single one of Yanagihara’s copies on these very festive Pride Month shelves, for that novel is not quite what would come to mind as a “celebrate pride month” book. There was hardly a moment while reading “A Little Life” where I felt celebratory. It is, merely devastating, but also beautiful, but also the hardest read of my life, but also the best thing I’ve ever grasped in my hands in my twenty-one years… you get the point.
I have strong opinions about one of these shelved books. But then, I met a humorous yellow cover with a woman, her mouth agape, and a swarm of bees circling the design. The book was called “Big Swiss.” I had sort of remembered hearing this title, maybe months prior during a conversation with some friends.
It turns out this book has swept so many of us away this summer, I am coming to learn.
As I exited my probability and statistics classroom after a quiz I was not prepared to struggle with so intensely, my good friend who graduated last year answered my FaceTime call. I meant to rant but also catch up with her about her past month of receptionless and remote kayaking through Alaska. It turns out, she too read “Big Swiss.” We shared a moment of shock, for during these sleepless nights with barely three hours of darkness (or actual nighttime), she too was flipping through the pages of Jen Beagin’s masterpiece, just like I was, parallel to her, along the French countryside.
For my first five days back in the great city of Colorado Springs, my friend Madeline Meister ‘25 was in the middle of experiencing “Big Swiss” too, and there was not a moment when she was not reading. I mean, Maddy always enjoys the catch-ups and chats in the kitchen of The Cipher House (821), yet somehow we became less interesting to her during her endeavor with this novel.
She excused herself to the living room, even switched the music to a low volume (which never happens; music means everything to Maddy), and continued the manuscript. It doesn’t even take persistence, like many books, yet unfortunately for me, I did feel a bit awkward reading the book.
It happened on a busy train across the French countryside and into the Northern part of Spain. As I read, there were moments where I wondered if people around me were glancing at the words on the page, for let’s just say, moments in that book were graphic when describing an intense love affair. It was maybe my very first time encountering a book that felt truly erotic. As I held my book up in this four-person train cart from Paris to Barcelona, a woman sat across from me. She was having a difficult time locating her phone and her pack of cigarettes (which she smoked continuously during every single five-minute or longer stop). It turns out, she was also having a very difficult time placing where I was from and what language I could answer in, especially when reading a book titled “Big Swiss.”
I find out later that she is, in fact, and coincidentally, a very tall woman from Switzerland (six-foot-two to be exact, but I hadn’t been able to tell you that until she was frantically rummaging through every corner of the cart for her phone, even reaching into my backpack!). Let’s refresh on that novel title “Big Swiss,” for she revealed how curious that title caused her to be, and I felt a little ashamed to have been on a European train and discarded thinking about the title of the book and how many travelers come from all over the continent.
After asking me to describe the contents of my book, I feel challenged to mumble and then reveal this quick summary. Something along the lines of: “basically this 42-year-old woman named Greta flees her life in California after a 13-year relationship and moves to Hudson, New York where she takes the job of a transcriber for a sex therapist who is writing a book about his clients and work, so he needs someone to transcribe all of the appointments, virtually. Greta becomes obsessed with one of the clients. The woman is tall and Swiss, so she calls her “Big Swiss.”
During a day of Priddy leader training, echoing from across the halls of Cornerstone Center’s Richard F. Celeste Theatre, a fellow Priddy leader in training remarks, “Oh you’re reading ‘Big Swiss,’” as Meister’s copy has been passed around so much by now, there is a large piece of blue tape keeping the cover page intact and reusable for future generations of future generations of readers of this novel. That’s what the buzz of a book will do to you, and we will just keep reading.