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.
Buy Now: The Skunks on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
More Must-Reads from TIME
- L.A. Fires Show Reality of 1.5°C of Warming
- Home Losses From L.A. Fires Hasten ‘An Uninsurable Future’
- The Women Refusing to Participate in Trump’s Economy
- Bad Bunny On Heartbreak and New Album
- How to Dress Warmly for Cold Weather
- We’re Lucky to Have Been Alive in the Age of David Lynch
- The Motivational Trick That Makes You Exercise Harder
- Column: No One Won The War in Gaza
Write to Tessa Berenson Rogers at tessa.Rogers@time.com