In Brood, a stunning new voice depicts one woman's attempt to keep her four chickens alive while reflecting on a recent loss.
Jackie Polzin lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with her husband and children. Brood is her first novel.
Some novelists floodlight the world; Polzin uses a penlight to
beautifully illuminate the least glamorous corners of a quotidian
life . . . 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 novel about the loss of a child pretending to be a novel about
chickens, it is a brilliant novel about chickens . . . addictive to
read . . . Jackie Polzin is a marvellous writer.
*Spectator*
Once you see her devotion to the chickens through the prism of
thwarted parenthood, her account of nurturing, feeding and
protecting takes on a painful poignancy . . . Though quietly
moving, our narrator tells her story with a dry wit, and fans of
Elizabeth Strout and Anne Tyler will devour it.
*Daily Mirror*
Polzin writes beautifully about chickens; she is lovingly cleareyed
about their “idiocy” and their dearness. She writes beautifully
about everything: the sound of melting snow at the end of a
Minnesota winter; a forgotten container of orange sherbet frosted
over; private emotion. Her eye for physical detail is surprising,
gimlet . . . It’s a pleasure to see what Polzin sees.
*New York Times*
Acutely observed . . . and the chickens provide metaphors for the
world at large.
*New Yorker*
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*
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.
*Claire Lombardo, bestselling author of The Most Fun We Ever
Had*
A truly lovely book, and so perfectly balanced – it felt like a
masterclass in how to tell a story through restraint.
*Jessie Greengrass, author of The High House*
I loved Polzin's philosophical way of writing and the narrator's
stoicism in the face of one loss after another . . . Splendidly
unsentimental, quirky, witty, smart and a complete one-off.
**
A beautiful book: sharp and funny and wonky in a way that only
accentuates its depth of feeling, its clarity of thought, and its
desperately human sadness.
*Lisa McInerney, author of The Glorious Heresies*
This is the most wonderful book! Acutely observed and flawlessly
conveyed. Completely original, full of surprise, humor, grief, and
wisdom and just the right amount of chickens. I am hugely on board
with Brood.
*Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside
Ourselves*
Written with such wry charm, such lightness of touch, you don’t
realise how far it’s got under your skin until it’s too late to
stop reading. I read Brood in one go. Very funny, very sad, very
wise.
*Lucy Caldwell*
A profound, uniquely enchanting big hearted novel. Unforgettable
and deeply affecting.
*Irenosen Okojie, author of Nudibranch*
I have never read a book like this one. Written with such delicacy,
such elegance, the prose made me feel that the narrator has opened
her heart to me, even as she withholds so much. This was a book
about everything—joy and love and beauty and loss. Marriage and
motherhood and friendship and grief. All brought to life through
the story of a little backyard flock. I was surprised at every
turn, moved to laughter and tears both—I could not put it down.
*Emily Ruskovich, author of Idaho*
A book about caretaking, about trauma and loss, about keeping
others and one’s self alive, with sentences so confident and exact
they continually took my breath away, Brood is that rare book that
lives inside of you long after it’s over, that reminds you of the
vast amounts of life that language is capable of conjuring.
*Lynn Steger Strong, author of Want*
Brood is beautifully written in a sparse, elegant style and is
sharply observed. It’s a compassionate portrait of a grieving
woman. I absolutely loved her connection with the chickens, and
although it is heartbreaking in places, I was left with a hopeful
feeling. For me Brood is about beauty in the small things, those
ordinary moments that make up a life. It strikes the perfect
balance of tender and wry.
*Haleh Agar, author of Out of Touch*
Witty and profound . . . Told in short vignettes studded with
breath-catching wisdom, this novel feels both delicate and
sustaining from beginning to end.
*Publisher's Weekly*
What pleasant alchemy is this novel? Polzin’s debut conjures humors
and sadness in Minnesota, where the narrator ponders the potential
of motherhood, a pending move, and the strangeness of raising
animals who force us to consider the world in a new, slower,
sideways perspective (which leads us to wonder: maybe the
strangeness is us?).
*The Millions*
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