Switzy by Emma Cline: book review (booker longlist)

Switzy by Emma Cline 

Thank you to Vintage for sending me an early copy of the novel for review purposes. All opinions are my own.

Historically, I have read Emma Cline with interest as a literary phenomenon but without much attachment to her work. I didn't quite get the hype around The Girls, and while I liked The Guest, it didn't leave a huge impression. I preferred her short story collection, Daddy, over both novels, which is a rarity for me. But, still, there's something that keeps me coming back to the new Emma Cline releases. Maybe it's that I like each new one a little more than the last. 

But Switzy is a novel entirely in its own league, among the most unique and impactful I've read so far this year and a total deviation for Cline. 

While she always writes about money and power in some form or fashion—and that remains true here—nearly everything else about Switzy is its own from the writing style to the switch to writing from the perspective of an old man, suffering from dementia, preparing to end his life in Switzerland rather than from the perspective of a young woman. Cline feels like she's hit her stride in this novel, experimenting, reaching, and landing these attempts. David, as a character, is convincing and compelling. Cline balances the fragmentation on the page, showing the gaps and distortions David experiences, while never making it hard to follow or confusing for the reader. She always gives enough external context clues that the reader, even from within David's experience, is able to put together things he cannot, which adds an interesting layer to the close third person narrative. 

Beyond the voice, she nails the pacing, giving the novel a momentum that kept me glued to the book without the feeling like it was tripping over itself to reach the finish line. Like a steady race towards the end, one that's already been predetermined in the opening of the novel but you still have curiosity about nonetheless. The fragmented segments and quick shifts from the present into memory keeps the story quite dynamic, and Cline delivers information in an effortlessly drip-fed fashion. She does an impressive job of weaving in all the writerly edges, cleanly presenting a story that allows you to forget, in a way, that you're reading a book. 

Part of what makes Switzy such a great read is the way she engages with recurring motifs. These are the little fragments that David holds onto through the entire book, some are mantras he repeats to himself, others are specific memories. One is a homework assignment he did with his daughter about where she lived, progressively zooming out to be the size of the whole universe—street, city, county, state, country, and on and on past the things we know how to name. There are a few repeated mnemonic phrases. There's the little stars on the piano keys his daughter would use as a guide to play songs without memorizing the notes. So many tiny, tender moments that stuck when almost everything was gone. The melting clock faces when he reached the point where he could no longer draw the hands, bits of songs. All of these create deeper passages into David's brain and form quite the emotional attachment. It was these little glimpses woven into the bigger narrative of David's journey to London and then Switzerland that made me think about the older relatives in my life and even think about my own parents. 

Cline also deserves her flowers for how exceedingly funny this book is. At the beginning of the novel, David is presented with a hydration packet that he muses to himself is meant to make his water "more wet". He tastes it, tries to assess. When the plane takes him from London to Switzerland, he's expecting another hydration packet but doesn't get one. He's disappointed. His internal monologue brings this to life in a way that had me giggling to myself. At another time, David thinks to himself, "The driver could ferry around a goldfish in a knotted plastic bag on the back seat, sloshing this way and that, and it would be pretty much the same thing." She also does a great job of pointing out the absurdity of modern life in these pithy, passing sentences that she's able to get away with because of the nature of the story, that might be too trite in another book, but had me taking out my highlighter. Many of these are often funny in their own ways. "The mouth was now the brain, they had discovered, which was now the gut. Or something," she writes. "Now that he did not want to expend any effort, he saw nothing but effort all around him," David thinks while watching a woman walk in stilettos. I think the great distance between myself and David's biography and life experiences gave me room to find enjoyment in a story that does dwell in darkness a fair bit. When I was talking to a family member about what I was reading, I was told that sounds depressing, and I wasn't sure how to articulate that, somehow, it was the opposite.

I left this book feeling an exceeding tenderness for the world. It made me pause and consider in a way I hadn't before, how truly terrifying it would be to actively feel the world slip from your grasp. Dementia is such a large concept to wrap your head around, and Cline delivered what good literature does—a tunnel inside an experience, the ability to walk around inside something complex through a singular pair of eyes. It made me think of the things that matter to other people more than they do to you, how important it is to sit in those things with them. It was a reminder, in a genuine way, that life is short. 

Overall: 4.5