MOOD SWINGS, by Frankie Barnet
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the way language can flatten art. A novel must be blurbed and marketed, then categorized (“sad girl lit,” “tech novel,” “internet novel,” “workplace novel,” etc.), to be sold. But doesn’t the reduction of an expansive work of art into a few words cheapen it — and allow us to ignore books we’ve decided “aren’t for us” based on their taglines?
While reading “Mood Swings,” Frankie Barnet’s ambitious and dynamic debut novel, I kept returning to that conflict between art and capitalism.
From the promotional copy of “Mood Swings”: “In a pre-apocalyptic world not unlike our own, a young Instagram poet starts an affair with a California billionaire who’s promised a time machine that will make everything normal again — whatever that means.”
I rolled my eyes. Oh, God.
How nice it is to be wrong.
The plot: Animals have revolted against humans, and the danger leaves everyone confined at home until a billionaire develops a sound that kills all of the planet’s nonhuman creatures. Afterward, there is a fierce divide between those who believe the extermination was murder and those who believe it was necessary. The fallout escalates, so the billionaire promises to fix everything via a time machine.
From the first page, the novel functions as a hypertext. Major world events unfold through the eyes of several intertwined characters, but we primarily follow two 20-something friends and roommates, Jenlena and Daphne. Jenlena is not beautiful, and she’s floundering through her life while writing Instagram poems. Daphne is beautiful, winning “real” poetry prizes and dating a canceled man. “They were not serious people,” Jenlena thinks.
Jenlena discovers she is pregnant. She gets an abortion, and that same day, the apartment she shares with Daphne burns down. Jenlena randomly meets the billionaire in a hotel bar and they begin a relationship. Meanwhile, both women interrogate whether the goals they’d set for their lives (getting degrees, getting promotions) still matter during the apocalypse.
If it sounds like a lot is happening in this novel, it is. “Mood Swings” is a master class in maximalism. The novel bombards the reader with a flurry of information: instant messages, news stories and even a drawing. We dip briefly and rapidly into the back story of each character. Overall, the effect is that of being inundated by a whirlwind of pop-up ads that you find yourself enjoying. By juxtaposing the collapse of the world alongside intimate character portraits, Barnet creates a novel where the personal runs alongside the political at every turn, and the two can never be separated.
The magic here is in the prose. Though the story itself is sprawling, Barnet’s writing is restrained and intentional. Moments that could turn saccharine are made meaningful by astute, almost insulting observations. “Every last person is either more or less beautiful than their mother,” a vivid section about Jenlena’s childhood begins. Another passage presents Jenlena’s wry musings on Uber: “Some girls wouldn’t even accept the ride if they didn’t like the look of a man, if he gave them a feeling. Anyone could rape them at any time. The danger was feared but also hotly anticipated as a rite of passage.” The novel is full of lines that shock in their simplicity.
Is “Mood Swings” a perfect novel? No, not exactly. The ending, for example, might not wrap up all of the narrative’s many threads, but I found the final scene to be a compelling resolution to the central friendship.
Yes, “Mood Swings” is a novel about tech moguls and the collapse of society. Yes, maybe it’s an “internet novel.” But it’s also so much more than that. And isn’t that lovely, to find a book that transcends its buzzwords? Isn’t it beautiful for a work of art to prove you wrong?
MOOD SWINGS | By Frankie Barnet | Astra House | 291 pp. | $26
