2024 Grand Prix du livre de Montréal, Longlist
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.

Everyone knows something’s off, but nobody can agree on just what it is. Maybe it’s the weather; maybe it’s because everyone’s so sensitive these days.

Jenlena and Daphne are two aimless humanities grads living in a crumbling Montreal when animals besiege cities and towns across the world, terrorizing their human residents. Though shocking, the threat is quickly neutralized when the animals are killed en masse for the safety of humanity. In the post-fauna world, Jenlena is transformed, shaking off her characteristic passivity to capitalize on other people’s heartbreak and grief by selling plants that have come to replace pets, and impersonating dogs for pay. Meanwhile, Daphne, a once-promising student, flounders in a deep depression, smoking weed and slacking off at work to hang out with her cancelled boyfriend. When Jenlena meets the California billionaire Roderick Maeve, and the two become romantically entangled, she is exposed to a new understanding of wealth, power, and the gender economy—just as the world hurtles toward its alleged salvation.

Marked with Frankie Barnet’s poignant intelligence and sly sense of humour, Mood Swings is a stand-out debut.

Frankie Barnet's profile page

FRANKIE BARNET is the author of An Indoor Kind of Girl and Kim: A Novel Idea. She has an MFA from Syracuse University and lives in Montreal.

Praise for Mood Swings and Frankie Barnet
2024 Grand Prix du livre de Montréal, Longlist
"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?” —The New York Times Book Review

★ “Barnet presents a canny portrait of the doomscroll generation, set in an absurdist near-future world . . . This is a sharp satire of a hyperonline culture, with genuinely moving insights into modern inequality and climate crisis throughout . . . This book is a great choice for fans of Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This (2021). An off-kilter, hauntingly hilarious debut novel.” —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

“[A] bonkers story . . . Despite the sobering material, this is a hoot." —Publishers Weekly

“There is a lot in this novel that should feel deeply strange . . . And yet, this surreal world full of tech oligarchs and unmoored 20-somethings feels all too close to home, as if we’re looking at our current reality through a funhouse mirror—which is really something, given how funhouse-mirror-y life seems these days.” —Bustle
“A clever trick mirror for the 'extremely online,' Mood Swings deserves its devotees.” —Elle

“[A] clever debut novel . . . a uniquely modern love story.” —NYLON

“[A] delightful debut novel . . . Ridiculously funny and as smart as satires come, Mood Swings is a pitch-perfect Instagram novel attuned for the modern age.” —Our Culture

“For a novel that doesn’t feature a single paradox, time loop, or change to history, Mood Swings offers up an incisive critique of time-travel narratives . . . [A] darkly satirical novel.”
—Locus
“What does it take to imagine the end of the world? Frankie Barnet begins Mood Swings on this note, but then takes it even further. Writing about dystopia may not require much imagination in this day and age, but writing about a fail-safe solution to the apocalypse? That’s much more novel.” —Montreal Review of Books
“What a wild ride—Frankie Barnet has written a fast, funny, witty, chilling first novel that, while ostensibly about a future or alternative reality, summons up the feeling of living in this reality with startling acuity.” —George Saunders, Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo

“Mood Swings is a book of vicious wit and glittering, feral prose that lingers like a strange dream. Barnet possesses an enviable agility with language, zipping between characters with the jubilant chaos of a tilt-a-whirl and unspooling a deceptively devastating meditation on power, morality, and the end of the world. I couldn’t stop reading once I started, and I can’t stop talking about it now that I’ve finished. You’ll want to hold its beating heart to yours; you’ll want to keep it as a pet.” —Aiden Arata, artist and writer

“Frankie Barnet’s propulsive, wholly original novel probes our dark preoccupations and our sources of hope in a seemingly hopeless world. Whether digging into the consequences of climate change, the allure of tech billionaires, the repercussions of cancel culture, or the love/hate dynamics of intimate relationships, Barnet’s singular voice is dazzling and unexpected. She has that rare ability to be at once poignant and genuinely fun, moving and totally hilarious. This book cracked my brain open in the best way possible—I’m obsessed and want everyone to read it!” —Alexandra Chang, author of Tomb Sweeping