The summer after college graduation is a time of confusing transition, and it’s then that we meet Isabel, adrift and searching for meaning. In The Skunks, Fiona Warnick’s protagonist has moved back to her hometown, and while she’s cobbling together jobs and reconnecting with an old crush, she becomes obsessed with three skunks she sees in her yard. Isabel imbues the skunks with a consciousness that mirrors her own: “Was a skunk’s first spray a rite of passage? Was it something adolescent skunks looked forward to, or dreaded? Or did skunk culture send them so many mixed messages they didn’t know what to feel?” Warnick’s prose is droll and bracing, and her novel is an inventive, enjoyable coming-of-age tale. Or, rather, tail.
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