Brood
Meet Gloria, Gam Gam, Darkness, Miss Hennepin County, and their unlikely owner. 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 another creature entails. From the freezing nights of a brutal 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.
Brood by Jackie Polzin is a darkly funny and startlingly original meditation on life and longing, full of sorrow, joy and unrelenting hope. It will stand beside such modern classics as H is for Hawk and Gilead.
US - Doubleday
New York Times
Editors’ Choice
LA Times - The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
The American Academy of Arts and Letters’ 2022 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction
Shortlisted
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2021 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
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The 2022 MN Book Awards
“Brood, which chronicles a year of grief subsumed through care, abounds in wit, charm, and the very mystery of being.”
“I have never read a book like this one. So much is unsaid, and that is where the true beauty of this novel lies, between the lines, even as the lines themselves sing. 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.”
“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.”
“The narrative is full of such sharp, distinctive observations as the narrator works to move on from her desire to have children. Told in short vignettes studded with breath-catching wisdom, this novel feels both delicate and sustaining from beginning to end.”
“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.”
“Calling to mind the cerebral works of Olivia Laing and Jenny Offill, Polzin’s story has a quiet intensity that churns throughout. It’s in the tension she builds within her narrator’s isolated world, navigating the paradox of domestic intimacy, the comfort and terror it sows, and the unexpected shapes motherhood can take…A moving meditation on loss, solitude, and the hope that can rise from both.”
“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.”
“One of our ten most anticipated debuts.”
