Brood

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.Tanya Gold, 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.Elizabeth McCracken, New York Times