Greta is the protagonist of Big Swiss. She is a trauma survivor who has experienced sexual assault and feels guilty for her mother’s death by suicide when she was a child. Greta’s relationship to her trauma informs her characterization throughout the novel.

The narrative is told in the third person limited point-of-view from Greta’s perspective. The narrative gives insight into Greta’s worldview and behavior through free and indirect discourse while keeping her psyche partially hidden. Greta has started a new chapter in her life. She left a stable and healthy long-term relationship to move across the country, start a new career, and outrun her problems. In Hudson, New York, Greta is lonely, impoverished, and without prospects. Greta works as a transcriptionist for a new-age sex and relationship therapist, Om, in her new home of Hudson, New York. Greta enjoys her job as a transcriber of Om’s therapy sessions because it gives her the opportunity to stay at home and create a false intimacy with his patients from a distance. Rather than actually develop meaningful relationships with new people, Greta’s audio tapes of the therapy sessions make her believe that she knows deep layers of people, humanity, and life itself.