Wednesday, January 20, 2021

Book Review - Brood; Jackie Polzin

 

TITLE/AUTHOR: Brood; Jackie Polzin

PUBLISHER: Doubleday

YEAR PUBLISHED: 2020

GENRE: Fiction 

FORMAT:  eGalley/LENGTH: 240 pp.

SOURCE: NetGalley

SETTING(s): Minnesota


ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY:  A story about emerging from grief by caring for a feathered flock.


BRIEF REVIEW:  Brood, a work of fiction, is a story about chickens, four of them, and a broken woman's determination to see these chickens survive. Told over the course of a year, the Brood: Darkness, Gloria, Gam Gam and Miss Hennepin County,  and their caretaker lived in Minnesota with it's sub-zero winters and scorching hot summers.   Our unnamed narrator certainly had her work cut out for her.  As she tells her story we learn of the challenges she faced along the way, not only in caring for her "brood" but, we also learn of her personal challenges and the deep sorrow and grief of having suffered an earlier miscarriage.

From the perspective of someone like me who has never tried to raise chickens or experienced a miscarriage, I had a somewhat difficult time engaging with this brief novel.  While I loved the cover and was curious about work involved in raising chickens, I thought that the writing felt a bit flat. I did learn quite a bit about raising chickens.

RATING: 3/5

14 comments:

  1. Sure sounds different. Sorry it wasn't a better read for you.

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  2. Such an interesting premise...sorry to see that the writing didn't hold up for even the length of a short one, though.

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  3. Oh, that one probably isn't for me, flock loss is too sad.

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  4. A bit too sad and overwhelming for me.

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  5. I like the concept of this and I could see how tending for the chicken would help with dealing with grief but I'm not sure the unnamed narrator and the writing would really work with me either.

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  6. Like Sam (above) my first thought was interesting premise. Sorry it didn't hold up for you.

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  7. I'm sorry this didn't work for you. I like the chicken part and I can, sadly, relate to the miscarriage part, but if the writing is flat... Gorgeous cover though !

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  8. Too bad this doesn't work that well. My sister in law has always had chickens and it breaks my heart every time a coyote (when they lived in CA) or a fox (now that they live in the UK) eats the flock.

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  9. It doesn't sound like something I'd enjoy, but I sure do like that cover art! Beautiful!

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  10. I do have experience raising chickens and this sounds like something I might quite enjoy reading. Thanks for the review, even though I'm sorry you didn't like it better.

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  11. That cover would draw me in too. Very striking. But, overall I'm not sure this would be a story for me. I cannot imagine raising chickens. I'm sure that is such hard work.

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  12. I like idea of raising chickens, the reality not so much.

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