Frankie Barnet's latest novel brings reality and absurdity together in a world where nature fights back
CBC Radio | Posted: May 24, 2024 6:53 PM | Last Updated: May 24
The Montreal-based author discussed her book Mood Swings on The Next Chapter
In Frankie Barnet's Mood Swings, animals besiege cities all around the world, fed up with the mistreatment of the environment.
For the supposed safety of humanity, they're all neutralized. But a world without animals is off-putting, and Jenlena, a floundering Instagram poet breaks out of her passivity and capitalizes on the heartbreak that ensues. As she learns more about wealth and power, she becomes romantically involved with a billionaire promising to bring the world back to "normal" with a time machine — but what "normal" really means is anyone's guess.
Barnet is the Montreal-based author of An Indoor Kind of Girl and Kim: A Novel Idea. She spoke with Ali Hassan on The Next Chapter about the universe she created and her hope that hope will carry on.
Give us a snapshot of this world that you wound up creating. Tell me specifically why the animals turned on people and what happens to them?
Well, I do have a pet cat who is kind of a bit of a terror. So maybe subconsciously that's where it came from. But I think more consciously, what I was thinking about was climate change and about how terrifying it is, but this idea of thinking of nature as a passive entity that we just continually, continually enact violence against — and it sort of has no recourse.
But what if that's not true? What if nature began to fight back?
What if nature began to fight back? - Frankie Barnet
It's sort of like the animals are going on a general strike and saying enough, we're going to flood the streets, we're going to mess up your infrastructure. We've had enough of you.
So that's what I was thinking, but not to spoil it too much, it happens all in the first chapter, but it doesn't doesn't work out so well for them.
In between YouTube and doom scrolling, Jenlena and her friends spend a lot of time online. How does that shape their lives and their worldview?
Hugely. I think the online world is as much a setting as Montreal is. The novel has scenes in California, a few scenes in Florida, and then some scenes in Alberta as well. But I think it would be the same way for any young person today to describe, or most young people today to describe how the Internet, the online world shapes their lives.
It's almost a hard question to approach. It's maybe more like how does it not shape their lives or what part of their lives isn't shaped by the Internet?
While I was reading this book, at times it was completely absurd. And then it was so very real. How do you craft a story that is both believable and absurd?
I'm not sure where these ideas come from. A lot of the writers that I'm really influenced by have fantastical plots that they use to tell very relatable or very everyday stories, and I think that something in me is very freed by entering into this absurd or fantastical mode. I feel unbound by reality, so I can kind of say whatever I want. And then I think with that, with that exploration into the more zany places, you really have to ground the work with some more relatable details.
Something in me is very freed by entering into this absurd or fantastical mode. - Frankie Barnet
So if for example I want to talk about a time machine, then let's ground that with someone scrolling through their phone. So these are balancing out the fantasy aspects with the more mundane.
The portrait of Jenlena in this novel is someone who has grown up in the shadow of environmental disaster, cancel culture, precarious employment… I could not help but think about the protests going on across campuses right now, in the U.S. and Canada… Where do Jenlena and her friends look for hope? Or do they?
I think the versions of Jenlena — and it's mainly her friend Daphne — I think who they are at the beginning of the novel, they would see a lot of hope in the protests going on right now, which is a difficult thing to say because it's hard to see hope in such a terrible situation. And of course, I'm speaking from my biased, privileged position.
But I see hope in it. I see hope in people getting together, working together and demanding that they have a say in our world, in our government, in our economy.
Of course, we don't know where these protests are going to lead, but I think if you look back at the last few years and just the amount of protests that we've had, it's clear there's something going on. In the novel, I describe it as weather, and it's not literally the rain or the snow. It's this mood that we're in, of this unrest brewing. I think you can't pack it away, you can't put it back in the box. It might seem unruly, but I think that that's the only way forward.
I see hope in people getting together, working together and demanding that they have a say in our world, in our government, in our economy. - Frankie Barnet
I would say the characters at the beginning of the novel would see hope. They might not be brave enough to openly be hopeful. I think a lot of us are more interested in being or at least appearing cynical and maybe we're a little ashamed to be hopeful or not confident in our hope.
I think by the end of the novel, they do find a sense of hope and in the journey that they've been on together.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.