Critical Praise

"To the ranks of literary grotesques add persons with olfactory affliction, an abnormality that renders Damien Youngquist -- like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Incredible Hulk, Frankenstein’s monster, and other of his fictional forebears --- at once repellent and sympathetic. Damien is addicted to skunks: first to their smell, then to drinking their musk. Soon too malodorous for society, he settles contentedly into a remote cabin, subsistence farming, and the company of his charmingly domesticated skunks. But solitude becomes less idyllic when Damien falls passionately in love with a woman he finds a bit repellent (she is addicted to canned fish and smells like it), loses her, and finds her again in an outrageous, darkly humorous love story with its own kind of happy ending."

—Bostonia

"The story of Damien Youngquist --- the annoyingly anal copy editor turned junkie who nearly loses it all chasing the skunk “musk dream” --- is as dark and twisted as it is tender and hilarious. From the love of Youngquist’s life, a fish fetishist named Pearl, to his bumbling anarchist neighbor Robbie, Courter creates characters so grossly flawed and dysfunctional that they could almost be real. Skunk brims with repugnant imagery that defies genre, but also reaches new levels of coherent realism and maniacal science fiction. Addiction, love and finding a place in the world is Skunk’s message, but the novel really jumps off the shelf because of Courter’s wicked gift of description and keen sense of story --- it’ll have you retching one minute, then trying to find a suitable skunk to milk the next."

—Sacramento News & Review

"...a mesmerizing glimpse into the mind of a man who has a skunk fetish."

—Bloomsbury Review