The First Draft

Sheila Heti is anything but ­predictable. Her latest novel meditates on friendship, intimacy, and identity through the frame of God, a disgruntled artist, as he stands back to contemplate his first draft of existence. After a long delay, the Lord decides to tear his design apart: the earth is obviously flawed. But before he scraps all living things entirely, he manifests himself as three art critics in the sky —“a large bird who critiques from above, a large fish who critiques from the middle, and a large bear who critiques while cradling creation in its arms”— to gain varying perspectives on what went wrong.

It is in this critical period of reflection and revision that we meet Mira, an art student born of a bird egg. People are also divided into three types: birds are sensitive, flighty souls who “consider the world as if from a distance”; fish are “concerned with fairness and...