Days' Bookmark

One of my friends recommended Big Swiss by Jen Beagin to me recently, and I finished reading it yesterday. It has a cast of quirky characters that I could never have dreamed up and a setting which includes a house with a beehive inside. Oddly enough, the story felt familiar the whole time I was reading it, but I couldn’t place it until I came to the final lines of the story and closed the novel.

This book is a modern lesbian rewrite of The Great Gatsby.

Not in a bad way—I adore The Great Gatsby—but it’s still surprising how classic novels repeat themselves like this. You wouldn’t expect a novel about a transcriptionist breaking HIPAA to have sex with a married woman would have anything in common with what has been called the great American novel.

Let’s start off with the names. Big and Great are synonyms, and the protagonist of Big Swiss is actually named Greta. Both James Gatz and Greta Work take on false names and identities, Jay Gatsby and Rebekah Graves respectively, to both deceive and woo their love interests. They pretend to be more than what they are, or at least different, as if who they are normally is not enough.

Their love interests are Daisy and Flavia. Both beautiful young women, both married to rich men, both living in the “better” part of town than our protagonists. They find themselves caught between the rich life promised by fidelity and the excitement of cavorting with the protagonists. And, spoiler alert, they both stay with their husbands in the end.

You have to wonder what this all says about the American Dream and romance. Don’t be fake? Don’t lie to your lover? I recall in Big Swiss that Flavia actually noticed Greta’s beauty before they began talking. Maybe there was always the chance of romance between them, and it was the lie that led to Greta’s downfall.

I wish there were some big takeaway I could get from this comparison and from the book, but I don’t feel that I have learned more about the world or myself. Still, the book made me laugh a few times, so I’d give it a solid 3 out of 5 stars.