Genre Fiction
![Jackie Polzin - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_jackie_polzin.jpg)
Brood: A Novel
An exquisite new literary voice-wryly funny, nakedly honest, beautifully observational, in the vein of Jenny Offill and Elizabeth Strout-depicts one woman's attempt to keep her four chickens alive while reflecting on a recent loss.
"Full of nuance and humor and strangeness…[Polzin] writes beautifully about everything." -The New York Times
Over the course of a single year, our nameless narrator heroically tries to keep her small brood of four chickens alive despite the seemingly endless challenges that caring for other creatures entails. From the forty-below nights of a brutal Minnesota winter to a sweltering summer which brings a surprise tornado, she battles predators, bad luck, and the uncertainty of a future that may not look anything like the one she always imagined.
Intimate and startlingly original, this slender novel is filled with wisdom, sorrow, and joy. As the year unfolds, we come to know the small band of loved ones who comprise the narrator's circumscribed life at this moment. Her mother, a flinty former home ec teacher who may have to take over the chickens; her best friend, a real estate agent with a burgeoning family of her own; and her husband, whose own coping mechanisms for dealing with the miscarriage that haunts his wife are more than a little unfathomable to her.
A stunning and brilliantly insightful meditation on life and longing that will stand beside such modern classics as H Is for Hawk and Gilead, Brood rewards its readers with the richness of reflection and unrelenting hope.
"Full of nuance and humor and strangeness…[Polzin] writes beautifully about everything." -The New York Times
Over the course of a single year, our nameless narrator heroically tries to keep her small brood of four chickens alive despite the seemingly endless challenges that caring for other creatures entails. From the forty-below nights of a brutal Minnesota winter to a sweltering summer which brings a surprise tornado, she battles predators, bad luck, and the uncertainty of a future that may not look anything like the one she always imagined.
Intimate and startlingly original, this slender novel is filled with wisdom, sorrow, and joy. As the year unfolds, we come to know the small band of loved ones who comprise the narrator's circumscribed life at this moment. Her mother, a flinty former home ec teacher who may have to take over the chickens; her best friend, a real estate agent with a burgeoning family of her own; and her husband, whose own coping mechanisms for dealing with the miscarriage that haunts his wife are more than a little unfathomable to her.
A stunning and brilliantly insightful meditation on life and longing that will stand beside such modern classics as H Is for Hawk and Gilead, Brood rewards its readers with the richness of reflection and unrelenting hope.
Editorial Reviews
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters • Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize Finalist • Minnesota Book Award Finalist
"Wondrous…Her observation of the fragility and loveliness of daily life is so sharp and her commentary so droll, trenchant and precise, that the modest world she describes becomes almost numinous."
-Washington Post
"A debut novel about chickens? Yes, indeed. And it's full of nuance and humor, not to mention the very human travails of their grieving owner. Polzin has a gift for detail and an eye for the way little creatures can absorb and sometimes erase our worries."
-New York Times Book Review
"The story is acutely observed [with] metaphors of the world at large."
-TheNew Yorker
"You will love this book…The voice is wry and rare…As with Sigrid Nunez or Jenny Offill, one feels that the narrator of Brood is very close to the author."
-Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Brood, which chronicles a year of grief subsumed through care, abounds in wit, charm, and the very mystery of being."
-Joy Williams, author of The Visiting Privilege
"Darkly funny and poignant, Jackie Polzin's Brood, a novel about friendship, motherhood, grief, and chickens, is a witty delight."
-Paula Hawkins, author of Into The Water and The Girl on The Train
"Oh, did I love this book and its magnificent cast of characters-human and avian alike. Brood is the most vibrant and compelling slice of life I've been privy to in a great while-it's generous, original, and witty, an absolute treasure of a novel."
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"Wondrous…Her observation of the fragility and loveliness of daily life is so sharp and her commentary so droll, trenchant and precise, that the modest world she describes becomes almost numinous."
-Washington Post
"A debut novel about chickens? Yes, indeed. And it's full of nuance and humor, not to mention the very human travails of their grieving owner. Polzin has a gift for detail and an eye for the way little creatures can absorb and sometimes erase our worries."
-New York Times Book Review
"The story is acutely observed [with] metaphors of the world at large."
-TheNew Yorker
"You will love this book…The voice is wry and rare…As with Sigrid Nunez or Jenny Offill, one feels that the narrator of Brood is very close to the author."
-Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Brood, which chronicles a year of grief subsumed through care, abounds in wit, charm, and the very mystery of being."
-Joy Williams, author of The Visiting Privilege
"Darkly funny and poignant, Jackie Polzin's Brood, a novel about friendship, motherhood, grief, and chickens, is a witty delight."
-Paula Hawkins, author of Into The Water and The Girl on The Train
"Oh, did I love this book and its magnificent cast of characters-human and avian alike. Brood is the most vibrant and compelling slice of life I've been privy to in a great while-it's generous, original, and witty, an absolute treasure of a novel."
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Readers Top Reviews
LefseKymberlee Royal
As a chicken mama, I really enjoyed this book about life with chickens and life in general. My husband and I listened to it on a long road trip and we were both chuckling at how many thing we have experienced as backyard chicken people. Thank you for this sweet book.
-ian
Heard about it from Jen Campbell to whom I owe so much of my present reading enthusiasm! Loved it so very much. Unique, different, touching and so smart
charles barnes
I loved the imagery conveyed in every sentence. Every short chapter felt like a poem in a way, each one delving a little more into the depth of the characters. As a chicken owner myself, the story was very relatable, but it went into so much more about yearning and love. Beautifully written
GiGi
This work is deeply profound in its exquisite prose and allegorical story. To those who suggest this book is merely “about chickens,” I am sad that its depth is lost on you. For those who have experienced loss - especially the loss of a child you tried desperately to but could not protect - especially for those who yearned to fill that gaping hole with anything that might quell the resultant grief and longing - this book lets you share your grief along side someone who understands it in the way only another survivor can. I cannot wait to see what this gifted author does next.
99hedys
This book was a great read- I consumed it in a day. Makes me wonder if I want to raise chickens.
Short Excerpt Teaser
I
n our first week of owning chickens, four years ago, Helen stopped by to see the quaintness of the operation with her own eyes. I show the coop to any visitor who expresses interest in the chickens. Helen is an exception. She is my friend and thus shows an interest in my life. She does not otherwise care about the chickens.
Her visit took place in the brief interval before the grime of chickens had been established. The paint was fresh, the mice had not yet located the stockpile of various grains, and our garden had begun to sprout fairy greens and delicate purple stems of a plant whose identity I never confirmed.
Helen's questions were predictable, but my limited knowledge of chickens did not include the predictable questions or the answers to them.
"Do the chickens know their names?" she had asked. The chickens have never answered to a particular name but answer to any upbeat tone, names included, hoping for whatever treat may accompany the sound.
"Do the chickens like to be pet?" She took a step back to indicate the question was not a request. "Are they upset when you take away their eggs?"
I didn't know the answers to any of these questions.
"Has a chicken ever laid an egg in your hand?" she asked.
"No," I said. And still, a chicken has never laid an egg in my hand.
I had not yet collected the eggs from early morning. Two brown eggs lay in a bowl of spun straw, one fair like milk tea, the other dark and a bit orange. At the time I did not know which chickens laid which eggs.
"Here." I placed the fair egg, which was also the smaller of the two, in Helen's palm. Her fingers did not soften to the shape.
"What should I do?" she asked.
"Cook it, eat it," I said.
"I mean now. What should I do now?" She did not hold the egg, but allowed the egg to rest on her flat hand, was only tolerating the egg for, I suppose, my benefit. The egg was not especially clean. The cleaner an egg looks, the more likely a visitor will accept the egg with grace and hold it in a manner befitting an egg, a force equal but opposite to the weight of the egg applied by a cupped hand, creating perfect balance and suspension in midair.
"Is it cooked?" she asked. "It's warm." She had seen me retrieve the egg from the straw, the straw worried down and out and up at the sides in the precise counter-shape of a nesting chicken, a bed of straw so primitive as to predate fire, and yet she wondered out loud.
"It's fresh," I said. "It's warm because it's fresh."
"Has an egg ever hatched in your hand?"
Everyone wonders if an egg, warm from a chicken, will hatch into a chick. The warmth of the egg prompts the retrieval of this otherwise remote idea. Among other triumphs of our generation, we have nearly extinguished the idea of an egg as a source of life. The confusion does not arise from the fact that people are no longer eating eggs or even that people are no longer cooking eggs. On the contrary, eggs are being eaten at a furious rate, and while the most adventurous preparations of eggs are crafted at the hands of professionals, in home kitchens the world over eggs are being prepared in more adventurous forms than ever before. The problem is not that eggs are bad for us or that eggs will make us fat. Rather, eggs are not as bad for us as we thought they were and eggs will not make us fatter than we already are. The problem is that people do not see the connection between an egg placed in their hand, fresh from a chicken, and the egg bought in the store. An egg that derives its warmth from existence inside the body of a chicken is far too fantastic to proceed as usual. If a fresh egg is placed straight into a carton versus an open palm, the confusion over what to do with an egg ceases to exist.
Weeks after Helen's first visit to the chickens, she returned with her boyfriend. He was a new boyfriend (and soon enough an ex-boyfriend) and she was trying to impress him. She had deemed her previous visit with the chickens sufficiently novel and called to warn me.
"I'm bringin...
n our first week of owning chickens, four years ago, Helen stopped by to see the quaintness of the operation with her own eyes. I show the coop to any visitor who expresses interest in the chickens. Helen is an exception. She is my friend and thus shows an interest in my life. She does not otherwise care about the chickens.
Her visit took place in the brief interval before the grime of chickens had been established. The paint was fresh, the mice had not yet located the stockpile of various grains, and our garden had begun to sprout fairy greens and delicate purple stems of a plant whose identity I never confirmed.
Helen's questions were predictable, but my limited knowledge of chickens did not include the predictable questions or the answers to them.
"Do the chickens know their names?" she had asked. The chickens have never answered to a particular name but answer to any upbeat tone, names included, hoping for whatever treat may accompany the sound.
"Do the chickens like to be pet?" She took a step back to indicate the question was not a request. "Are they upset when you take away their eggs?"
I didn't know the answers to any of these questions.
"Has a chicken ever laid an egg in your hand?" she asked.
"No," I said. And still, a chicken has never laid an egg in my hand.
I had not yet collected the eggs from early morning. Two brown eggs lay in a bowl of spun straw, one fair like milk tea, the other dark and a bit orange. At the time I did not know which chickens laid which eggs.
"Here." I placed the fair egg, which was also the smaller of the two, in Helen's palm. Her fingers did not soften to the shape.
"What should I do?" she asked.
"Cook it, eat it," I said.
"I mean now. What should I do now?" She did not hold the egg, but allowed the egg to rest on her flat hand, was only tolerating the egg for, I suppose, my benefit. The egg was not especially clean. The cleaner an egg looks, the more likely a visitor will accept the egg with grace and hold it in a manner befitting an egg, a force equal but opposite to the weight of the egg applied by a cupped hand, creating perfect balance and suspension in midair.
"Is it cooked?" she asked. "It's warm." She had seen me retrieve the egg from the straw, the straw worried down and out and up at the sides in the precise counter-shape of a nesting chicken, a bed of straw so primitive as to predate fire, and yet she wondered out loud.
"It's fresh," I said. "It's warm because it's fresh."
"Has an egg ever hatched in your hand?"
Everyone wonders if an egg, warm from a chicken, will hatch into a chick. The warmth of the egg prompts the retrieval of this otherwise remote idea. Among other triumphs of our generation, we have nearly extinguished the idea of an egg as a source of life. The confusion does not arise from the fact that people are no longer eating eggs or even that people are no longer cooking eggs. On the contrary, eggs are being eaten at a furious rate, and while the most adventurous preparations of eggs are crafted at the hands of professionals, in home kitchens the world over eggs are being prepared in more adventurous forms than ever before. The problem is not that eggs are bad for us or that eggs will make us fat. Rather, eggs are not as bad for us as we thought they were and eggs will not make us fatter than we already are. The problem is that people do not see the connection between an egg placed in their hand, fresh from a chicken, and the egg bought in the store. An egg that derives its warmth from existence inside the body of a chicken is far too fantastic to proceed as usual. If a fresh egg is placed straight into a carton versus an open palm, the confusion over what to do with an egg ceases to exist.
Weeks after Helen's first visit to the chickens, she returned with her boyfriend. He was a new boyfriend (and soon enough an ex-boyfriend) and she was trying to impress him. She had deemed her previous visit with the chickens sufficiently novel and called to warn me.
"I'm bringin...
