Pet Project

What do a baby crow and a rustling dress have in common? The noise they make, which is something like “high whispering trills and soft chortles.” At least, that is the case according to “The Art of Dying,” from Nadja Lubiw-Hazard’s debut collection, The Life of a Creature.

I have no idea what a fledgling crow sounds like, but I’m inclined to take the Toronto writer’s word for it. She worked as a veterinarian for many years before turning to a career in fiction. Her capacity to conjure such unusual associations feels rooted in experience, both as a vet and as someone whose imagination draws from somewhere beyond a world of binaries — especially when it comes to human and animal.

Lubiw-Hazard’s approach is equal parts medical and medicinal as she tends to sites of patriarchal ruin. Matter-of-fact narration directs the reader’s gaze toward trauma that’s inflicted on all kinds of beings without falling into total detachment or sensationalism. She...