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Bitter Water Opera: A Novel
An electrifying debut novel about art, solitude, family, and faith in a world without it
In 1967, the dancer Marta Becket and her husband were traveling through Death Valley Junction when they came across an abandoned theater. Marta decided it was hers. She painted her ideal audience on its walls and danced her own dances until her death five decades later.
In the present day, Gia has ended a relationship and taken a leave from her job in film studies at a university. She is sleeping fifteen hours a night and ignoring calls from her mother. In a library archive, she comes across a photo of Marta Becket and decides to write her a letter. Soon Marta magically appears in her home.
Gia hopes Marta Becket will guide her out of her despair. But is Marta—the example of her single-minded, solitary life—enough? Through precise, vivid vignettes, Bitter Water Opera follows Gia as she resists the urge to escape into herself and struggles to form a lasting connection to the world. Her search has her reckoning with a set of terrifying charcoal drawings on her garage walls, a corpse in the middle of a pond, a crooked pear sapling, and other mysterious entities before bringing her to Marta’s theater, the Amargosa Opera House. There in the desert, Gia finds one answer.
In this brief, astonishing novel, Nicolette Polek describes an individual awakening to faith while exploring our deepest existential questions. How do we look beyond ourselves? Where do words go? What is art for?
In 1967, the dancer Marta Becket and her husband were traveling through Death Valley Junction when they came across an abandoned theater. Marta decided it was hers. She painted her ideal audience on its walls and danced her own dances until her death five decades later.
In the present day, Gia has ended a relationship and taken a leave from her job in film studies at a university. She is sleeping fifteen hours a night and ignoring calls from her mother. In a library archive, she comes across a photo of Marta Becket and decides to write her a letter. Soon Marta magically appears in her home.
Gia hopes Marta Becket will guide her out of her despair. But is Marta—the example of her single-minded, solitary life—enough? Through precise, vivid vignettes, Bitter Water Opera follows Gia as she resists the urge to escape into herself and struggles to form a lasting connection to the world. Her search has her reckoning with a set of terrifying charcoal drawings on her garage walls, a corpse in the middle of a pond, a crooked pear sapling, and other mysterious entities before bringing her to Marta’s theater, the Amargosa Opera House. There in the desert, Gia finds one answer.
In this brief, astonishing novel, Nicolette Polek describes an individual awakening to faith while exploring our deepest existential questions. How do we look beyond ourselves? Where do words go? What is art for?
121 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 16, 2024
90 people are currently reading
6727 people want to read
About the author
Nicolette Polek
4 books119 followersNicolette Polek is a fiction writer from Northeast Ohio. She is the recipient of a 2019 Rona Jaffe Writers' Award, and her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Paris Review Daily, Electric Literature, Spike Art Magazine, New York Tyrant, and elsewhere. Nicolette holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Maryland and an MAR from Yale Divinity School. She currently teaches at SUNY Purchase and Bennington College.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 300 reviews
July 23, 2024
yeahhhh baby this is what it’s all about.. god and love and essence and the desert
February 23, 2024
My genre of choice is typically stream of consciousness narratives from the point of view of a woman living alone / in isolation. This book falls into that category and does it very well - kept me on my toes just enough and felt very tender. It reminded me of The Wall by Marlen Houshoffer, in the most positive way. Would recommend if you are in the market for a story about a woman who’s working through things.
March 31, 2024
“The world was covered in pinholes to be peered in. Ideas emerging in precise places, containing endless opportunities for revelation.”
October 3, 2024
Bitter Water Opera
was an education on so many levels. It took me awhile to understand where we were headed. This was a read that smacked me upside the head AFTER I was done.
First and foremost, and the last thing I understood (as I am often not the brightest bulb in the pack), this is a book about finding faith again.
Next, this is a book about losing hope, but having enough rebellion to keep exploring options far removed from that which stole it away. Escaping.
and Next to Last, this is a book about Marta Becket. More particularly her spirit. A ghost. A mentoring ghost in her body's last and best residence - Amargosa Opera House.
Lastly, this is about epiphanies. The big ones. The turn your life around ones.
NOW, just a little tip: before you read this book look up Amargosa Opera House - find the movie, and there are a handful of YouTubes, or just google it. You will get the cover, it will blow open all the doors of this read. I'd never heard of Marta or Amargosa Opera House. Discovering this woman and her amazing life worked like a rosetta stone for me, and the read melted into me once I'd done this groundwork. I'm now reading Marta's autobiography, To Dance On Sands.
Bottomline, this is a book about Gia -every girl - no, every human - who's had hard things happen and has lost her their hope. Still she they keep moving, keep reading, keep observing, keeping that internal conversation open and honest. . .and like Marta finds her their moment, her their peek through a dusty window into what can be hers theirs if she they move forward. . .
I count this as one of the best books I've read this year. I'll be thinking about it for a long time. Thank you, Nicolette Polek, for the musical sentences, that moment washed in light, and for Marta.
*A sincere thank you to Nicolette Polek, Graywolf Press, and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review independently.* #BitterWaterOpera #NetGalley
First and foremost, and the last thing I understood (as I am often not the brightest bulb in the pack), this is a book about finding faith again.
Next, this is a book about losing hope, but having enough rebellion to keep exploring options far removed from that which stole it away. Escaping.
and Next to Last, this is a book about Marta Becket. More particularly her spirit. A ghost. A mentoring ghost in her body's last and best residence - Amargosa Opera House.
Lastly, this is about epiphanies. The big ones. The turn your life around ones.
NOW, just a little tip: before you read this book look up Amargosa Opera House - find the movie, and there are a handful of YouTubes, or just google it. You will get the cover, it will blow open all the doors of this read. I'd never heard of Marta or Amargosa Opera House. Discovering this woman and her amazing life worked like a rosetta stone for me, and the read melted into me once I'd done this groundwork. I'm now reading Marta's autobiography, To Dance On Sands.
Bottomline, this is a book about Gia -
I count this as one of the best books I've read this year. I'll be thinking about it for a long time. Thank you, Nicolette Polek, for the musical sentences, that moment washed in light, and for Marta.
*A sincere thank you to Nicolette Polek, Graywolf Press, and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review independently.* #BitterWaterOpera #NetGalley
September 18, 2024
I do tend to love fiction that illustrates Kierkegaard’s philosophy of existential despair - and its cure. In poetic prose, our narrator Gia is here encountered deep in despair. She would appear to be in the second of the three kinds of Kierkegaardian despair, not to will to be oneself. She is aware that she has a self independent of the finite, is deeply unsatisfied living only in the immediacy of the finite, but her pursuit of synthesis between the finite and the infinite, which could allow her self to shrug off its despair, is a confused and painful one. She first tries to find it in relation with other people; her romantic partnership crumbles as, finding it unsuited for purpose, she futilely tries to find it with still other people. Walking with a colleague, feeling a rush of connection,
In the second part of the text she tries to find it alone in nature. She borrows a lush, isolated house from another colleague while on work leave. “I had long looked to fix my life through other people, so now, I considered, I could try fixing it alone.” At times while gardening and planting trees and existing in nature she feels buoyed and this is a great relief, but yet the despair still exists and pushes through.
It is in the third part of the text that she is able to finally open that door to the infinite. In the second part she had heard a preacher’s words, “Words don’t fall away and disappear, but form thought shapes, lead separate lives… blossom, or echo, clicking into meaning years later… Revelation finds its time.” At a hotel in the desert, memories of her mother’s faith now come to reach her. “A prayer felt stark and concrete, full of movement, like a kicking in the belly. I felt a tug toward God both in me like a speck of pollen, and outside me like a meadow, propagated by my mother’s many words that drifted around my life like pearls… What followed each prayer was silence, then desire or frustration. Sometimes I didn’t feel anything. Each ended with the same plea, awkwardly. God.
Then after a drive to Badwater, “the lowest point in the country”, she awkwardly prays and is fortunate enough to be granted a mystical vision:
Her self now grounded in God, able to form a synthesis of finite and infinite, she has overcome her despair through faith, what Kierkegaard described as “In relating itself to itself, and in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it.” This, religious faith, is the only way to overcome our despair, be it conscious or unconscious.
“I too had tried to preserve myself, but the object of preservation can never be the one to do the preserving. Life comes from outside of time… I thought I had nothing, but after long enough something emerged from bitter water - a mysterious thing that precedes itself, and continues past itself, a master of ceremonies who stands outside the beginning and end.”
A beautiful book, with Polek touchingly thanking in the acknowledgements “My mother for her faith, and God who supplies the strength to continue.”
There was a row of crab apple trees at the top of the trail, sturdy and mangled with age, and I climbed onto one of the lower branches to look out at the vista. He turned toward me to say something, and as he did, I caught his hand. I didn’t understand why. A thrilled impulse. He moved closer, as though this was intended all along. In an instant, the levity from our walk extinguished under irreversible fog. We stayed there pressing each other against the crab apple tree, until the bark dug into my back and the sun fell from dark orange to gray. I didn’t see him again, and crafted a series of lies to cover up the evening.
In the second part of the text she tries to find it alone in nature. She borrows a lush, isolated house from another colleague while on work leave. “I had long looked to fix my life through other people, so now, I considered, I could try fixing it alone.” At times while gardening and planting trees and existing in nature she feels buoyed and this is a great relief, but yet the despair still exists and pushes through.
Not even nature, in its stillness and silence, could pull me out of myself in any lasting way. Even after days when I was grateful to be surrounded by its complexity and beauty, and would experience weightlessness and relief, I would still retreat, hours later, within my rattled body, unable to bring nature inside. I turned to face myself and it failed. There was still a door in me, and I kept it shut.
It is in the third part of the text that she is able to finally open that door to the infinite. In the second part she had heard a preacher’s words, “Words don’t fall away and disappear, but form thought shapes, lead separate lives… blossom, or echo, clicking into meaning years later… Revelation finds its time.” At a hotel in the desert, memories of her mother’s faith now come to reach her. “A prayer felt stark and concrete, full of movement, like a kicking in the belly. I felt a tug toward God both in me like a speck of pollen, and outside me like a meadow, propagated by my mother’s many words that drifted around my life like pearls… What followed each prayer was silence, then desire or frustration. Sometimes I didn’t feel anything. Each ended with the same plea, awkwardly. God.
Then after a drive to Badwater, “the lowest point in the country”, she awkwardly prays and is fortunate enough to be granted a mystical vision:
A presence shook me; it was strong and wild, shattering enough to place at the front of something. I became small and unnoticeable, but it was a smallness where something wonderful surged around me. The smaller I became, the more I could see it. Like a fractaling reveal, tying my days together with a single thread. I crinkled down into the sand. I felt the squint the happens when one is staring directly into the sun, but it was my entire body squinting at love… The shock turned to ecstatic giddiness. Who could I tell this to? I thought. God’s touch!
Her self now grounded in God, able to form a synthesis of finite and infinite, she has overcome her despair through faith, what Kierkegaard described as “In relating itself to itself, and in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it.” This, religious faith, is the only way to overcome our despair, be it conscious or unconscious.
“I too had tried to preserve myself, but the object of preservation can never be the one to do the preserving. Life comes from outside of time… I thought I had nothing, but after long enough something emerged from bitter water - a mysterious thing that precedes itself, and continues past itself, a master of ceremonies who stands outside the beginning and end.”
A beautiful book, with Polek touchingly thanking in the acknowledgements “My mother for her faith, and God who supplies the strength to continue.”
April 28, 2024
There is actually such a thing as trying too hard and, in your attempts at sounding beautiful and profound, losing the heartbeat of the real, living truth you are trying to convey. What an insufferable little book.
April 21, 2024
Life comes from outside of time.
No.
Time wins over time.
No.
I felt tired by the wondrousness of her message.
Yes.
No.
Time wins over time.
No.
I felt tired by the wondrousness of her message.
Yes.
November 11, 2025
Giving $5 to anyone who can tell me one thing that happened in this
December 21, 2024
really pretty easy read but docking it a star bc i lowkey hate god
December 7, 2024
The protagonist, Gia, lives alone and has fallen into despair after a series of life's setbacks. The current day storyline follows Gia’s attempt to follow in the spiritual footsteps of the dancer Marta Becket, a real person. After Marta’s car broke down Death Valley Junction, she discovered the Amargosa Opera House and decided to stay. It is a beautifully written meditation on the continued attempt to find hope and peace in one’s life. It pays homage to the place of art in our world. It celebrates faith and spirituality but not in a heavy-handed way. It is a short book with a positive message.
January 30, 2025
If I had a nickel for every time I read a book about a depressed woman finding “god” in Death Valley, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice…..
Like the cover, this book was pretty. Whimsical and meandering and nothing really happens. The audiobook was only about 3 hours, which had it been any longer I don’t think I’d have been very invested. A nice listen, didn’t blow me away.
Like the cover, this book was pretty. Whimsical and meandering and nothing really happens. The audiobook was only about 3 hours, which had it been any longer I don’t think I’d have been very invested. A nice listen, didn’t blow me away.
May 22, 2024
beautifully poetic, pleasantly boring, frustratingly in-cohesive
May 5, 2025
One of those books that either sticks to your ribs, or flies right in one ear and out the other. I fell into the former category, really resonating with Polek's flowery yet almost abrupt style of writing. The setting was evocative, the cultural touchstones were pretentious, but in a way that I loved (hello Wings of Desire and The Red Shoes, nice to see you.)
The musings on God and faith lost me somewhat, but I appreciated the journey of feeling adrift in the throes of adulthood. A secondary coming of age for a protagonist decades into her womanhood. I'll be reading whatever Polek puts out next!
The musings on God and faith lost me somewhat, but I appreciated the journey of feeling adrift in the throes of adulthood. A secondary coming of age for a protagonist decades into her womanhood. I'll be reading whatever Polek puts out next!
July 17, 2024
A solid 4.5. What’s wild about this is that I read it on a whim and it heavily features a location that I happened to pass bye two years ago where I made my boyfriend turn the car around before we continued on just so I could get a picture of it. Now it feels like fate. This was a really good, introspective look at purpose, appreciation, and making meaning both out of art and of one’s own life.
August 1, 2024
to live as if living permanently, in a place where I am only temporarily
May 5, 2025
This was a quick daydream of a book. It was written like a Lana Del Rey song, a little sad, a little introspective, a little southern gospel.
I think the writing was extremely poetic and I would love to read more from this author.
I would recommend it be read physically rather than on audiobook. While the narrator was great I feel like bc of the context and how its formatted it was easy for my mind to wander.
I think the writing was extremely poetic and I would love to read more from this author.
I would recommend it be read physically rather than on audiobook. While the narrator was great I feel like bc of the context and how its formatted it was easy for my mind to wander.
December 30, 2025
Gals and ghosts
June 23, 2024
I think this is an exacting and precise book. It does what it sets out to do in sharp yet sparing prose. It, too, is an amalgam of its narrator--that of art, film, monomania, limerence, living. It is, truly, the line between delusion and faith. And this faith (as someone who has always been averse to religion) is handled with such care that, really, it is non-denominational. There is this 'leap of faith' which many writers (Camus, in particular) have lambasted others over, and yet here it is a calling from the trough that feels genuine. Other themes of preservation, solitude, yearning, grasping, and contradiction are both present and symbolic.
I think, if you're someone who's looking to write thinly-veiled fiction, this is a book worth reading because it showcases how to scope, scaffold, and make a work that's journey-led.
I think, if you're someone who's looking to write thinly-veiled fiction, this is a book worth reading because it showcases how to scope, scaffold, and make a work that's journey-led.
September 12, 2024
3.75. This was a random library find and I really enjoyed spending an afternoon with it. It’s a quiet novel of a woman, Gia, on the precipice of change, post break-up and on leave from her job, and her attempts to, as cliche as it sounds, find herself, or maybe, to find peace within herself. She seems to be having the age old issue of: wherever you go, there you are.
Told through a series of vignettes over four sections, the first focuses on the story of Marta Becket, a real woman who, after breaking down in her car while traveling through Death Valley Junction, stumbled upon the Amargosa Opera House in disrepair and decided to never leave (it’s a fascinating story, look it up). The ghost of Marta is summoned by Gia and the spirit of the old woman comes to stay for a while. Though hopeful that Marta can ease her despair, it’s not enough.
The next two chapters see Gia temporarily moving to a remote cottage and then finally making the pilgrimage to the Amargosa Opera House. Both trips an attempt to bring the life and soul back into her “theater set” existence.
Gia’s resolution is one of finding God, but it’s not a preachy book and Gia’s journey of crawling out from inside herself to find connection with the greater world can be a relatable experience for any reader, religious or not.
Polek’s writing is poetic and gentle, it’s a quiet and introspective book that I absolutely recommend reading while alone and surrounded by nature (or by the lake if you’re a Chicago city dweller like I). It’s a book that’ll make you want to escape to the desert for a bit.
Told through a series of vignettes over four sections, the first focuses on the story of Marta Becket, a real woman who, after breaking down in her car while traveling through Death Valley Junction, stumbled upon the Amargosa Opera House in disrepair and decided to never leave (it’s a fascinating story, look it up). The ghost of Marta is summoned by Gia and the spirit of the old woman comes to stay for a while. Though hopeful that Marta can ease her despair, it’s not enough.
The next two chapters see Gia temporarily moving to a remote cottage and then finally making the pilgrimage to the Amargosa Opera House. Both trips an attempt to bring the life and soul back into her “theater set” existence.
Gia’s resolution is one of finding God, but it’s not a preachy book and Gia’s journey of crawling out from inside herself to find connection with the greater world can be a relatable experience for any reader, religious or not.
Polek’s writing is poetic and gentle, it’s a quiet and introspective book that I absolutely recommend reading while alone and surrounded by nature (or by the lake if you’re a Chicago city dweller like I). It’s a book that’ll make you want to escape to the desert for a bit.
September 20, 2024
vignettes of boringness
tried too hard to be transcendent
tried too hard to be transcendent
September 29, 2024
an odd, prettily surreal novella for artists, dancers, and downtrodden dreamers, full of finely plucked sentences and memorable tableaux
January 14, 2025
she sang directly into my heart
January 27, 2025
A book that feels plucked from my own head. Part magical companion a la Mrs Caliban, part existentialism a la Pure Colour, and a true love letter to Marta Becket and Death Valley.
Our narrator is contemplating the life of the eccentric dancer Marta Becket as a lens for her larger questions about the roles of art and religion in life.
Our narrator is contemplating the life of the eccentric dancer Marta Becket as a lens for her larger questions about the roles of art and religion in life.
August 13, 2025
How utterly dull these dimes square Jesus freaks are
May 13, 2025
Marvelous, gentle, splendid passages in which I snuggled into surprising descriptions of myself. A lovely book perfectly suited to me. Sometimes you find a book by accident (a Goodreads friend did not like this book, but her review caught my eye!) and reveal a part of yourself you didn't know could be described by another. Thank you for writing this.
April 18, 2024
Gripping, brilliant stuff.. could of read another 100 pages, but it’s trim template will have me going back in the future. The kind of polished work you can indulge within a night and think about for long after. “if God exists outside of time does everything in the world happen at once?”
April 26, 2024
I am obviously partial to art with spiritual concerns, but I think this is a remarkable novel even without my bias. It cuts so close to the heart of modern malaise, of loneliness, of disenchantment that it only makes sense for the ghost(?) of Marta Beckett to show up as a saving symbol in the first pages, pointing ultimately to God who shows up as a saving reality in the last pages. It touches something undeniably true, even if you're unsure whether or not you believe it. It bears a resemblance to Jon Fosse in this way.
July 8, 2024
4,5⭐️
🎀 so coquette 🎀
and it was also exactly what I needed when I needed it. i can see how it can be boring or weird for others, but i think i had a Bitter Water Opera shaped hole in my heart and it filled it.
🎀 so coquette 🎀
and it was also exactly what I needed when I needed it. i can see how it can be boring or weird for others, but i think i had a Bitter Water Opera shaped hole in my heart and it filled it.
May 12, 2024
A perfect fouetté turn
July 15, 2024
came for the ballet (i was a ballerina for 7 years can u believe that), stayed when i realized this would not only get me out of my slump, but become an oft revisited staple in my personal library
Displaying 1 - 30 of 300 reviews