Brood
by Jackie Polzin
New Book of the Week , May 31, 2021
"Life is the ongoing effort to live. Some people make it look easy. Chickens do not."
As a person who aspires to one day keep my own backyard chickens, I was delighted by this little novel about an unnamed woman who becomes mother to a flock of four hens in rural Minnesota. Polzin's writing is spare but so specific in its attention to detail that I forgot, more than once, I wasn't reading a memoir, or sitting outside, observing the meanderings of actual flesh-and-blood chickens. But Brood is about so much more than the precarious business of raising chickens. It's a meditation on life—expectations, transitions, grief—and reading it felt like a hug after a hard year.
P.S. I am team Gloria.
As a person who aspires to one day keep my own backyard chickens, I was delighted by this little novel about an unnamed woman who becomes mother to a flock of four hens in rural Minnesota. Polzin's writing is spare but so specific in its attention to detail that I forgot, more than once, I wasn't reading a memoir, or sitting outside, observing the meanderings of actual flesh-and-blood chickens. But Brood is about so much more than the precarious business of raising chickens. It's a meditation on life—expectations, transitions, grief—and reading it felt like a hug after a hard year.
P.S. I am team Gloria.
— Anika
Brood was reviewed in Newsletter #300 on May 31, 2021. For more like this, and other bookish news, sign up for the newsletter .
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