Greta has repressed significant details from her mother’s suicide. Flavia endured a horrific assault that she insists is no big deal. And both women are still learning how to deal with the central tragedies of their lives. Flavia is married, a fact that she doesn’t hide but which is, obviously, a complication. Greta gives Flavia a fake name when they meet, and she doesn’t tell Flavia that she knows her deepest secrets. This relationship is defined by its intensity and by the ticking time bombs buried within it. Her job is to listen to recordings and write down what she hears, but she quickly develops a parasocial relationship with Om’s clients-not that different from a listener’s relationship to a podcaster or, for that matter, Mona’s imagined relationship with Terry Gross of “Fresh Air.” But Greta’s feelings for the client she calls “Big Swiss” are unusually intense, and a chance meeting at the dog park with this well-known stranger-whose real name is Flavia-turns into an affair. After quitting her job as a pharmacy tech and leaving her fiance, she moves from Los Angeles to Hudson, New York, and starts working as a transcriptionist for a sex therapist named Om.

Beagin’s new main character is literally paid to eavesdrop on the therapy sessions of strangers. Her first two novels starred Mona, a woman whose job cleaning houses affords her a fascinating window into her clients’ lives and an idiosyncratic education in human behavior. The author of Pretend I’m Dead (2018) and Vacuum in the Dark (2019) returns with another wonderfully off-kilter protagonist.īeagin loves weirdos-fully and unironically.

Big swiss jen beagin review