The Skunks / Fiona Warnick / Tin House, May 7, 2024 – $17.95 (paperback)

Half skunk fable, half coming-of-age text, Fiona Warnick’s debut novel The Skunks follows Isabel, a college graduate back in her hometown post-graduation, and her fabular fixation on the skunks in her backyard. Throughout the novel, Isabel remains in that sticky, awkward phase of post-college graduation life. She reconnects with her hometown sweetheart, spends her days babysitting or working the front desk at a yoga studio, and confronts her relationship with her childhood best friend Ellie—all while chronicling the activities of the fauna in her backyard.

With Isabel in tow, Warnick writes into the cracks of human experience in The Skunks—its slowness and moments of pause. The Skunks indulges in what happens between moments of definition or belonging. In The Skunks, Isabel is going nowhere really, but Warnick’s point, written in a subtle delicate prose, is that she doesn’t have to be. When the world and its infrastructure demands that Isabel define herself—her job, friendships, relationships, finances—Isabel resists, at least for the duration of the novel. We are soothed by her relative aimlessness. Maybe it’s okay to sit in a lack of definition, remain a little lost for a while, and, of course, mind the skunks.