At the risk of “treating complex women in literature as a ‘trope,'” I must admit there are few archetypes I love more than a messy woman. Getting to witness female characters act badly, make wild decisions, and generally buck expectations can be a liberatory reading experience. Check out some of my favorite examples of messy women in recent fiction!
The book that inspired this whole post was Jen Beagin’s Big Swiss. Greta works as a transcriptionist for a sex therapist in Hudson Valley, New York, where she lives in a dilapidated Dutch farmhouse with her friend and a swarm of bees. She develops a fascination with the voice of one of the clients of the therapist, whom she nicknames “Big Swiss.” When Greta recognizes that voice in the wild, she embarks on a series of terrible choices, all designed to get closer to the woman. Most of the other characters on this list are in their twenties, so it’s nice to see Greta, a forty-something, portrayed with such weird nuance. Impossible to put down, both grotesque and laugh-out-loud funny, Big Swiss is a refutation of the standard trauma narrative and a perfect vehicle for unethical, bizarre voyeurism.
Shelf Talk 