Summary

In Part One, when God finished creating the universe, he considered what he had made like an artist. In the present, the universe is in “the moment of God standing back” (3). The world is vanishing while God watches. God knows “the first draft of existence” is flawed,” and considers making a second draft (4). He splits into “three critics in the sky”: a bird, a fish, and a bear (4). Though the people born of bird, fish, and bear eggs all have different ways of thinking and behaving, they are all valuable. Though they are all valuable, they critique one another.

God values aesthetics over everything else. The universe might be different if God did not “conceive of creation as an artwork” (6). Most artists’ hearts are hollow.

This story “concerns a birdlike woman named Mira” and her love “for the mysterious Annie” (6). Mira...