Brood, by Jackie Polzin

Hanging out with chickens brings the fundamentals into focus. Death, birth, grief, loss, and our communal nature comprise theme as well as substance of Jackie Polzin’s meandering narrative.

It was the pairing of miscarriage and poultry that prompted me to peruse Brood. At the outset of this short novel, the unnamed protagonist has been caring for her flock of backyard chickens for four years. Accounts of subzero Minnesota winters, poultry trivia, run-ins with neighbors, friends ignorant of eggs and their ways, and the narrator’s professional house cleaning eventually reveal the miscarriage six years in her past.

I came to chicken keeping in 2009 with purely utilitarian interests. A neighbor proposed a partnership, whereby our family would house the chickens in our existing but uninhabited dog run. Both households would share the labor, expense, and eggs. I readily agreed, but, ambivalent toward animals and allergic to most, I was up front: I was in it only for the eggs.

At the time we had a two-year-old. I soon found myself expectant with what was to be our last—a pregnancy that would end in miscarriage. Maybe the absence of siblings contributed to our daughter’s love affair with chickens. Whatever the case, her enthusiasm more than made up for my lack of it.

On that mild, February Super Bowl Sunday when we brought the chickens home, I let the last of the lumbering black Australorps out of its burlap bag. Straightening, I turned to find my daughter, grinning and triumphant, cradling a hen half her size. In the ensuing weeks she adopted them as sisters, hung out in their house, and carted the obliging hens about in her plastic wagon.

Years later I read that one shouldn’t allow children to play with chickens unsupervised—should never, under any circumstances, allow children to kiss or hug them. Too late. She survived.

As our daughter grew, her appreciation for poultry proved contagious. In the wake of the six Australorps, indistinguishable in their glossy anonymity, followed chickens of varying breeds, names, and personalities. At a point when we were down to two hens, my sister dropped off three she’d found on Craigslist. Another we nabbed from the porch of a vacant house after watching her roam the neighborhood for a few days. At age nine or ten, my daughter took over the chickens; I, having caught the bird fever, moved on to pigeons. (But that’s another story.)

All this accounts for the resonance I felt with Polzin’s narrator, both in her longing for motherhood and in her frantic efforts to safeguard her chickens. For surely the two intersect—the twin instincts to nurture creatures whose existence depends on us. (Admittedly, the roving chickens of Hawaii, whose existence I recently discovered, survive on their own much longer than a human infant would in the wild. But domestic poultry in North America—not so much.)

The voice of Brood’s narrator rings with bantering irony. But beneath it lurks the reality of death and deterioration. By the end of the book, all four members of her flock have gone the way of these lower-end-of-the-food-chain creatures, dispatched by cold or predation or the mysterious maladies that arrest seemingly healthy hens in the prime of life.

Cleaning houses for her realtor friend Helen provides Pozlin’s protagonist ample opportunity for reflection. Neither order nor cleanliness, she propounds, is a natural condition. All things tend toward chaos. What is dust, if not evidence of the unavoidable degeneracy of matter? Indeed, the temporal limitation on a woman’s ability to conceive is itself testimony to her body’s inevitable march toward the grave.

The home of the narrator and her husband, Percy, provides further evidence of this predilection toward decay. Cracks proliferate in foundation and ceiling, and most of its neighbors boast boarded-up doors and windows. Generally speaking, the neighborhood has “not lived up to its potential.” Even the trains, which used to come with well-regulated predictability, now rumble by at all hours, disturbing the peace and weakening the walls.

Percy is an unemployed economist whose self-absorption yields boundless optimism, despite the obscurity of his publications and the apparent paucity of his income. Where the chickens reduce life to its essentials, Percy takes the stuff of everyday and makes it arcane. Why did manufacturers eliminate dried eggs from brownie mixes? Percy’s enlightening conclusion: So home bakers could add their own and increase their sense of accomplishment.

Early in Brood Percy flies to California to interview with a university. If, against the odds, he gets the job, the chickens will have to stay behind; the university township does not allow poultry. Percy the theorist will miss the idea of himself as someone who keeps chickens. His wife will miss their flesh-and-feathered selves.

Certainly not all women yearn for motherhood. I didn’t until nearing thirty. But Percy’s indifference and the narrator’s longing, which receives and requires no justification, follow well-worn tropes. Whatever the explanation for these stereotypes, one doesn’t have to search far for real-world examples.

The narrator also boldly asserts that every pregnant woman wants a daughter; if she says she wants a son, she is self-deceived. I’m not entirely convinced on this point, but on her statement that “the child will be a boy or a girl” I am agreed. A chicken will be a hen or a rooster. Some things are determined in the egg.

It is difficult to say which undergoes greater alteration in the course of the book—Percy or his wife’s perception of him. By the conclusion he has gone from hypothetical partner in chicken keeping to the sort of husband who stays up alone into the wee hours, abetting the search for the lost last chicken. When he finds her, mangled, he yields up the evidence of her decease to his wife with the utmost delicacy.

Some passages suggest Percy may have been equally attentive all along. On the day the baby was to be born, his wife describes the he his customary attentions, pouring her coffee, clearing her plate, looking up from his work to smile at her. She is hurt that he has torn the day from his dated notebook, but, as a reader, I can think of multiple explanations for such a gesture. Grief and insecurity can profoundly affect a marriage. The narrator admits, “Sometimes I do question my role in his life and the likelihood of exhausting it” (128).

The demise of the final chicken enables the couple to move to California unencumbered by an illegal chicken. But within the world of the book, it also suggests the chickens have served their purpose. They have provided bereaved maternity with creatures in need of care. They have occasioned reflection. They have moved on, and they allow their keeper to do the same.

The narrator of Brood often observes that chickens do not remember or anticipate. All times are now. To reflect and analyze is a privilege—and a curse—reserved for their owners. Perhaps the rambling nature of Polzin’s narrative mirrors a chicken’s experience of the world. All scenes, whether six years ago or six days, are now. Context and brief verbal time stamps clarify when needed, but chronology doesn’t matter substantially.

The telescoped process we witness is all the more painful for its essentially private nature. A friend once commented to me that a miscarriage is a solitary grief; no one but the mother knew and experienced the reality of her deceased child. Perhaps this is why, as Polzin observed in an interview with the Center for Fiction, fertility and miscarriage are uncommon topics in our society both for conversation and literature.

I appreciate that Brood doesn’t end with a birth announcement; not all griefs are salved. Months after my miscarriage, I was forced, at age thirty-seven, to come to grips with my post-menopausal condition. When a friend gave me a book of stories about infertility and adoption, I thanked her but said, “I’m not ready to read other people’s happy endings.”

Nor does Polzin fall in with those who told me (in all justice), “At least you’ve got one child.” Brood’s narrator muses, “If our baby had gone on living, I, too, would want another. I suppose it would feel no different from the way things are” (p. 84).

For all that, this is not a book about infertility. It’s a book about a woman, who happens to be childless against her preferences, caring for a flock of chickens. She is defined neither by her childlessness nor by her profession. She cleans houses, but not as a steady occupation. She attended university, but we are not told what she studied or what career options might lie open to her.

For better or worse, all of us are defined to some degree by our relationships—son, daughter, spouse, friend. Polzin’s protagonist manifests few close relationships in this passage of her life. Moments of vulnerability with Percy and Helen are scarce. Her cross-country move, away from a nurturing, if spartan, mother, neighbors, however distant, and Helen, however wanting in understanding, poses genuine risk. Apart from Percy, at last sufficiently steady to constitute a reliable life partner, the protagonist seems a bit adrift, without family, profession, chickens, or even a name to anchor her.

An expert story teller, Polzin keeps to observable facts, whether that be poultry science or a tornado tearing through the chicken yard. Even her protagonist’s philosophizing concerns the concrete—the qualities of clean surfaces, the tendencies of dirt. Good stories, like chickens, present the facts and invite the reader to brood upon them. Polzin’s compact work is one of these.

Jackie Polzin's novel, Brood, explores the endless challenges of caring for another creature.

When I scheduled this interview with Jackie, it was long before I knew I’d have to make an emergency veterinarian appointment for my cat that required a hard out so I could make it in the only time available. That I was experiencing a minor crisis with my own livestock as I prepared for this interview made me realize yet again the impact—emotional and literal—of the affection we feel for these creatures that share our lives.

On the surface, the nameless narrator tries to preserve her brood of chickens. But go deeper, and it's a look at life and longing.

Here’s my conversation with Jackie Polzin, author of the novel Brood.

I’m judging the L.A. Times 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got me to read on even though it was among 296 other books I’m charged to read.

A singular book from a singular mind. If you—like me, sometimes struggle with reading I highly recommend this book. What a thrill.
“Beneath Gloria is an egg, large and cocoa brown. She does not lay eggs of this color. She lays eggs the color of a peach crayon and much smaller in size. Gloria has taken to sitting on all the eggs as if they were her own. Gloria sits with a crazy gleam in her eye but that is just a chicken;s eye. The eye of a chicken is all that’s left of the dinosaurs, a little portal into the era of nut-size brains Meaning cannot be derived from a chicken’s eye because meaning does not exist there. But also, the craziness of the eye obscures everything.”

Wowza—I’d never thought about chickens in this way before—and now I find them fascinating but also I’ve been wrestling with a dissertation that deeply considers vision, Jean Paul Sartre’s accusing look— or Jacques Lacan’s alienating gaze. What if it’s just a chicken doing chicken things?

I began Brood as an ebook, and while I was enjoying the pros, I found my mind drifting. So I decided instead to listen to the audio while doing a deep clean of the house...It was perfect for audio, partly because when my mind drifted in and out, I didn't miss much, and partly because to me the best part of this book is Polzin's use of language,which just flows beautifully out loud. And Rebecca Lowman narrates it in a droll, casual style (she reminds me of Cassandra Campbell, a favorite) which is perfect for the book's wry, subtle humor.

I can't help feeling it would have worked just as well truncated to a short story or novella, but I did stay engaged. An interesting and sometimes exquisite study in how the narrator contends with this particular sort of grief.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for my copy of Brood by Jackie Polzin in exchange for an honest review. It published March 9, 2021.
This book initially drew me in because of its cover. Then upon reading the synopsis, I was quite intrigued. I have many friends and family who raise chickens, and it was fascinating to read a story where that's what the main character does. I learned quite a lot about chickens, and the raising of them, I had no clue what the implications were.
This book made me think of books like Olive Kitterage, and the short story feel to each chapter was an interesting way to go about things. I enjoyed most of the book, but got a really bad taste in my mouth over the stating that all pregnant women want a daughter, and if they find out they're having a son, they are disappointed. That just isn't so. I found that generalization to be close-minded and just plain wrong. It was unnecessary for the story, and unnecessary for the author to make that statement. Maybe the author feels that way, but not every single woman in the history of the world has been disappointed in having a boy, and it really ruffled my feathers.

Brood by Jackie Polzin is incredibly poignant and a beautiful, albeit short, novel. I re-read the book after I finished it, and found so much symbolism as it relates to life and loss. Sure, the general overview of the book is one woman's attempt to keep her brood of chickens alive, but the book is really so much more. It had so many emotional moments of happiness and sadness....I finished the book and just thought, "Wow."

If you like your symbolism laid on thick, you will find plenty to enjoy in Jackie Polzin’s latest, Brood. Playing on the multiple definitions of the word used as its title, Brood is part chicken care manual, memorial to the loss of fertility, and confessional about a woman’s state of constant worry and insecurity. Polzin’s novel, with its nameless narrator, is described as a work of fiction but it seems far more personal and autobiographical. In the first person, the book delves deeply into highly emotional territory. The men in the book are dismissed as extraneous, clueless and immature. They are indulged and tolerated in all their awkward efforts to be relevant. The women are the deeper souls who truly understand what needs to be done and the importance of connection. The author contrasts the hardiness and frailty of life, both bird and human. The narrator is depicted as caught in a constant state of uncertainty and concern about those in her care. Fate plays an outsized role in her life: as a relentless force that can disrupt ambitions and intentions with its malicious interference. She envies the hens that seem to have no memories or desires beyond immediate gratification. This one-way bonding leaves her unsatisfied, however, and burdened with responsibility. Polzin often dips a bit into sentimentalism and it can be frustrating to witness a narrator so lacking in agency and self-efficacy. Brood is a short read that will resonate with people who have experienced similar losses and disappointments. It is also serves as a decent guide for beginners caring for their own small flocks in a northern climate.

Thanks to the author, Doubleday and NetGalley for a pre-published copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

CW: Before the book begins, the narrator had a miscarriage, and it doesn't get mentioned right away so I don't want anyone to be surprised. (I knew from other discussion I'd seen.)

Small, internal, pondering books are my salvation in the last year.

This one reads like lyric essay or memoir, like Annie Dillard. It combines observation and real life with a few memorable characters, and like Moby Dick (facts about whales!) it is about chickens, but it also isn't.

I felt the weird sense of disconnect to humans and clinging to these chickens as something that makes sense, a weird sense of surreality in trying to make sense of what life will be now, what does living mean, a deep unknowing of the self (but wanting to.) Sometimes connecting to chickens is the one thing you have, so then what happens if they don't survive? The author uses the word brood about her chickens, her absent child, but also I think the way we use that word to mean agonizing contemplation - or as Google wants to define it, "to think deeply about something that makes one unhappy."

This won't be for everyone, but it was for me.

Quirky and very enjoyable read about caring for chickens but also miscarriage. The tone is sarcastic and irreverent but there is also an undercurrent of emotion that the reader only gets glimpses of, which reflects how the narrator focuses on mundane details rather than the difficulties of the past. Odd but affecting and completely original.

"Brood" is a quiet, gentle little gem of a read! In its almost anecdotally rendered and beautifully worded series of vignettes, shall we say, Polzin allows the reader small little glimpses over the course of one year into the everyday life of a couple who, while coming to terms with an impending career change for one of them that will necessitate a cross-country move for both, are also reeling from the reality of dreams made and dreams lost when a horrific late-term miscarriage rocks each to their very core. Life, for sure, in all its unexpected twists and turns and unwanted grief.

In the meantime, a ragtag little brood of four beloved backyard chickens, in some unique and "chickenish" fashion, become the glue that holds these anxiety and grief-stricken humans in the vertical position throughout this tumultuous year. While chronicling their care throughout the months following the miscarriage, Polzin shows us how the four, fine feathered girls allow the two emotionally strained humans to move, however tenuously and slowly, toward a renewal of shared purpose. While not your traditional take on pet ownership (owing primarily to the fact that chickens basically are not your typical "warm fuzzy" unconditional love-giving pets we usually find) these clucking, crowing, noisy and busy egg-laying fluffy-feathered creatures provide the restorative focus that each of the bipedals in "Brood" require to regain their emotional equilibrium.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to Jackie Polina for her most excellent wordcraft, to the publisher for their wisdom in recognizing her talent, and to NetGalley for providing me with an advanced digital copy of this sweet read in return for a fair and honest review.

#Brood
#JackiePolzin
#NetGalley

I love Polzin's writing. It's spare, raw and insightful and completely grabbed me. The plot revolves around a woman and her husband raising their chickens but it speaks directly to motherhood. The book covers delicate topics beautifully and finds the small joys in what could be a mundane life. I look forward to reading what Polzin puts out next.

Thank you to Doubleday and Netgalley for a copy to review.

Brood is a quietly tender novel that contains multitudes of emotion within. Our narrator navigates the joys of her nurturing and protective role with grief and trauma, and her chickens seem to fill an unexpectedly deep void in her life. Her experiences fluctuate between all that she has learned about chickens throughout her endeavors and all that she still does not know as she faces hardships and unexpected threats against her birds, which offers the readers a window into the narrator’s complicated role as the birds’ caregiver. Reading Brood feels like gently bouncing on undulating waves – there is a sense of peace and meditation amongst the highs and lows.

Based on the premise, I had really high hopes for BROOD. I love quiet, literary, introspective novels. I wanted to learn more about farming in general and chickens in particular. While I enjoyed reading BROOD - and stuck with it until the end - I was left feeling a bit unsatisfied.

The writing feels crisp and accomplished, but there's almost a clinical quality to it. This might work if we eventually achieved an intimacy with the narrator. Unfortunately, this intimacy never arrives, nor the warmth I expected and wanted.

It's almost as though the narrator intentionally keeps the reader at a distance. Again, I'm okay with this approach at the beginning of a narrative. But as I continue reading, I want those walls to come down.

I recently completed Brood by Jackie Polzin and what an unusual book, it’s a story about a unnamed narrator who is raising her chickens in the backyard of her Minneapolis. Throughout the book she takes you through her task of caring for her four chickens — Darkness, Miss Hennepin County, Gloria and Gam Gam. It took me a second to understand that this book wasn’t just about chickens, but the grief thus said narrator experienced after her miscarriage and her longing to be a mother. Filled with nuance and humor I would totally recommend this book. thank you, Doubleday Books for this gifted arc.

Brood Is a beautifully written sensitive portrait of loss but ultimately deeply depressing. The author writes of her hopes for motherhood and the dashing of those hopes. Woven between these revelations are colorful tales of raising 4 chickens. Unfortunately it is not a story of a quartet of quirky hens and all their lovable foibles. Instead it is like reading an Agatha Christie country house mystery where one by one the characters meet mysterious and tragic ends. I’m just glad there were only four. I think if I had been presented another pile of crumpled feathers, I would not have been able to bear it. As it was I was left with a sense of sorrow that no amount of deep cleaning by the author as she prepared to move could possibly erase. I hope writing this provided her some solace. Such a trade-off might make me feel somewhat better. Otherwise, in the isolation of this pandemic, the pain far outweighs the pleasure.

Wonderful, dry, funny, unique, thoughtful, and a meditation on grief and raising chickens. I had to make sure this wasn't a memoir before writing this review because it reads like one, but it is fiction. The narrator is a woman taking care of a brood of four chickens for a year in Minnesota, while also coping with the loss of her baby in a miscarriage. It is at once blunt, whimsical, educational and interesting. Do you know someone who is very smart, sarcastic and able to share fascinating esoteric facts? The narrator has all these qualities and is someone I’d enjoy as a friend. Through her, we learn many facts about chickens — chickens don’t have teeth, chickens don’t lay eggs on rocks, chickens only live in the present moment — as the narrator weaves in personal details about her life, her infertility, her husband and and her best friend. I really enjoyed this slim, beautiful volume. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read and review it.

2.5 Stars

Thank you #NetGalley @DoubleDayBooks for a complimentary e arc of #Brood to review upon my request. All opinions are my own.

In Brood, an unidentified female narrator cares for a small brood of chickens. She describes the challenges of bad weather, predators, and inexperience. The story is comprised of observations of ordinary, daily life with a few reflections.

Brood is beautifully written with some lovely prose and features a unique premise. However, my reading experience was a bit perplexing because I kept thinking of it as a journal (nonfiction) when it is actually fiction. Also, because this is described as having rich reflections, I went into the read expecting more reflection. Rather than reflections, we get observations of every-day life routines in journal style writing. From the beginning, I was confused about the genre and the author’s purpose.

Readers who appreciate character-driven stories featuring plentiful observations of daily life might really like Brood. I have been known to appreciate a character-driven story, but I need a small plot to keep me turning pages. Wondering whether the chickens would live or die was the most intriguing part.

Although parts of the story were interesting, I had difficulty connecting with it overall. I can connect with the task of caring for creatures in a general sense, but I felt little emotional connection with the narrator, her grief, miscarriage, household concerns, or her impending move. I do have chicken memories of visiting my grandma’s farm and watching her chase a chicken around the yard, wringing its neck, and chopping its head off. Then she’d plop the chicken into the kitchen sink and pluck the feathers. I can still vividly recall the smell of wet chicken feathers. I don’t remember having many experiences caring for chickens; however, I do remember being pecked on the nose once while gathering eggs! I can imagine if you’ve raised chickens or have been around them that you might enjoy parts of this story.

Other readers have loved Brood. The person who recommended this to me reported that it would likely be her best read of the year. Every person has a unique reading experience and no two persons read the same book. Fans of observational, character-driven stories and chicken owners might love this! Also, it is well written. I encourage you to check out more reviews.

“Life is the ongoing effort to live. Some people make it look easy. Chickens do not.”

BROOD is a quiet novel that covers a single year in which the nameless narrator tries desperately to care for and preserve her brood of four chickens. over the course of the book we come to know the people in the narrator’s life as well as the grief the narrator is carrying, and that her chickens are perhaps a replacement of sorts for the children she cannot have. it’s a beautifully written book about motherhood and loss and longing, and I was surprised at how much that I, too, came to care for these chickens. I look forward to reading more from this author!

Brood is a quick, easy read that is insightful and compelling. On the surface, this is a book about a woman living in Minnesota caring for a small flock of 4 chickens and cleaning houses. But, it is so much more than that; it's about sorrow, reflection, grief, survival, and acceptance.

Brood is about things you can control, and things you can't control like miscarriages and the weather. It's about a flock, a sense of family, constant change, and coping.

Our main character has 4 hens: Gloria, Darkness, Miss Hennepin County, and Gam Gam. I love chicken names, because they are so random and you never know what is going to stick. The breeds, like our protagonist, are not named. I loved reading about them. I even learned a few things that I didn't know about chickens. And I was sad about their demise.

Short, sweet, and not very happy. If you're looking for a feel good book, this one is not for you, but it's poignant, reflective and a solid, quick read about the human spirit and the not-so-secret lives of chickens.

"Brood" was a surface-level, easy read. Though it does deal with miscarriage and grief, it does so in a way that isn't deep or overwhelming. I enjoyed the story, and learned a lot about chickens while reading it, but it just felt very simple. Other reviewers have said it was like reading a diary; you never know the main character's name, and it's just her thoughts spilling out without much reason. A second read may give me a deeper perspective. Thanks to NetGalley, DoubleDay Books, and Ms. Polzin for letting me review this book.