Open Book: Frankie Barnet

An interview with Frankie Barnet on her debut novel Mood Swings.

RIYL: Fraught friendships, climate anxiety, the majesty of all animals, Grimes’ lore within Montreal DIY circles, meddlesome billionaires, internet hysteria, cults.

From the jump, all hell breaks loose in Frankie Barnet’s Mood Swings.

An apocalypse forces best friends Jenlena and Daphne to shelter-in-place — and it’s worse than the one you’re thinking of right now. The animals have had enough, rising up against humans to enact a reign of terror that turns even the most docile pets into dangerous creatures.

Then, just as suddenly as the revolt began, it’s over: billionaire Roderick Maeve commissions a sonic boom that instantly kills every creature for the safety of humanity, ushering in a new post-fauna world that feels far from an upgrade. In typical tedious billionaire fashion, he attempts to course-correct with something only his vast fortune can fund: a time machine that will make everything “normal” once again.

Mood Swings is a uniquely modern story of life continuing on, even after the world (allegedly) ends. Barnet is a gifted architect of the absurd and a keen observer of societal derangement; her characters adjust as best as they can to their new lives by slinging houseplants to people yearning to replace pets and cosplaying as dogs for cash. Barnet’s vision of a not-so-distant future is both gutting and euphoric, going down as easy as the flick of your thumb on your phone in an endless, intoxicating Twitter feed.

Below, Language Arts caught up with Barnet about the novel.

I'm curious about the first seed of the novel. Were the animals always a part of this? 

Not at all. The first seed of it was a young woman having a relationship with a very powerful man, and that was really all the novel was for years, but it wasn't working. I wasn't able to get the traction that I needed with just one idea. I was probably struggling with that for probably six or seven years, and then pretty much everything else came in this burst of inspiration during the pandemic. I was finally confronting the fact that it didn't work the way I had it and that I really wanted it to; I was so stubborn. I put so much work into it, but I could no longer ignore the fact that it wasn't working. It was like: It's now or never, let's throw everything I have into this.

It’s definitely unlike anything I've ever read before, especially in terms of categorization. Even though a huge part of it is about a time machine, it's not a time travel novel by any means. 

I got on lists for anticipated sci-fi novels, and I was like, “OK…” I don't really feel like it is. You write something or you make something, and then once it's done, you're sort of relinquishing control over describing it. 

I want to talk about the cult around climate anxiety: the Moon Bethlehems. How did they take form? Are you into cults?

I'm really into cults. That was the thing with what I was saying before: Let's throw it all in there! This is one of my main interests, get this in there! It was also fun to have Moon Cicero as a way to express some of the more extreme ideas I had. That's what I liked about having so many characters, because I could kind of take an issue and instead of having to decide what my opinion is on it, I can have each character have a different opinion. To some extent I agree with all of them, but to have this one hyper online one was fun. I guess she's just an extreme hater. She's very much inspired by people I have on my feed. 

She is also an archetype now: A modern person who's constantly online, sort of angry, rude. You feel constantly on the defensive when they're around. Everything I say can be misinterpreted and used against me. It's a police officer mentality.

Exactly. Sometimes just being on my phone, I feel like, “Am I being policed?” It was kind of therapeutic in a way to get into that, to play that role totally myself.

What else did you find helpful about writing from multiple POVs? 

I just found I couldn't keep up the energy of one POV. I did an MFA at Syracuse and I feel so lucky I got to take a workshop with George Saunders. He would have us read one of our stories and the only critique we would give was: Where did the energy lag? Where did you start to lose interest? Don't say why, don't say anything else. Just say “On page three, I  started getting a little bored or it seemed like things were lagging.” I found that fascinating and so helpful. You're working on more of an instinctual level versus trying to analyze yourself and your writing. 

Throughout the book, there's so much information being given to the reader. We have text messages, testimonials from bystanders, Twitter threads, and even illustrations. Did this tie into moving the energy forward or was this just something you wanted to try? 

There's a book called Stolen Focus [by Johann Hari] which is basically about how people can't focus on anything and it was kind of scary. One of the things he said was that your mind takes the form of whatever media you consume the most. His example was like, “I wouldn't want my mind and thought processes to be in the form of Twitter, short, angry bursts. I would rather my mind be a long Russian novel.” 

To some extent, it's like, “Yeah, that's great!” It’s horrible to think of our minds as short, angry bursts. But writing the novel, I can see that probably a lot of those choices are unconscious reflections of how I'm consuming information. Maybe I wanted to see if that wasn't an inherently shallow toxic project, maybe I wanted to explore: Can we find something worthy in the way all these sources of information are bouncing off and reflecting each other? 

Jenlena and Daphne's friendship felt like one of the most grounded parts of the novel: the competition, envy, and their shared strangeness. What made you want to write about this dynamic? 

I feel like if I look back on most of the stories I've written up until maybe two years ago, there’s two female characters who are maybe in a fraught relationship. I think it's been a way for me to work out feelings that I have in my own friendships. Maybe also the relationship between two women has been more interesting to me. 

I've been with my husband for 10 years. It's not to say our relationship is perfect or boring, but I feel like my friendships have been more tumultuous than my romantic life. I also wonder if I ever felt like an internal censorship about writing too much about men, if I thought then it would be chick lit or romance. Then the question is: Why are these my only choices? I don't know. It's nice to hear you say that you felt that that was the most grounded part. I've always been interested in having wild ideas and then grounding them in an intimate relationship between the characters. 

I felt that way about Roderick as a character, too. He’s an eccentric billionaire, he’s responsible for the death of all the animals, and he’s building a time machine to fix it all. He’s incredibly selfish. But then you learn about the tenderness with his mother and realize he’s a deeply Floridian, lawless outsider.

I've never been to Florida and I was worried, like are the clichés I was going off these easy, low  hanging fruit? I don't want to do that! This is going to sound crazy, but did you ever watch America's Next Top Model? 

Of course… 

Do you remember one season it was guys and girls? There was this guy named Mikey with really long blonde hair and he was from Hollywood, Florida. For some reason, I can so clearly picture his testimonial and I feel like every way that I describe Florida was his energy and his vibe. I remember at the time thinking it was insane that a place called Hollywood, Florida existed. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.