The trope of the troubled artist seeking ecstatic forms of escapism in their art is neither novel nor esoteric. In many cases we see art-making as a desperate yearning for intimacy. Yet, in Nicolette Polek’s debut novel Bitter Water Opera, Gia, the narrator, abandons once and for all the mysticism of creation. We follow Gia as she traverses the boundaries between the physical and the abstract, the sacred and the perverse, the quixotic and the quotidian. 

In the very first chapter Polek unveils the mystical figure, Marta Becket. When Marta and her husband passed through Death Valley Junction in 1967, they stumbled upon an abandoned theater. Marta, an aspiring ballet dancer and choreographer, declared it her own. Up until her death five decades later, she performed her own variations and painted murals of her ideal audience on the opera house’s walls. As the story of Marta unfolds, Gia hesitantly reveals her current state of lethargy: she has broken up with Peter and is currently on leave from her work as a university film studies professor. Unanswered calls from her mother, a large mattress with too many holes in it, and the couch cushion that sits on top of the telephone decorate her room. In a frantic epiphany, Gia chooses to write a letter to Marta upon finding a picture of Marta’s opera house in a library archive. Marta soon emerges in Gia’s house. 

Marta’s will is the reality. And as much as Gia longs to frolic in a world of self creation, she is inadvertently reminded of an unbearable solitude by her own reality as well as the inherent perversity of creation and art-making. Polek envelopes her readers through the threading of broken vignettes to contemplate limerence, and in doing so, combines abstract memory with physical, concrete objects that perpetually haunt both Gia and her readers. 

Bitter Water Opera follows a series of wistful vignettes and sketches as the narrator falls into a cascade of memory and longing. In most cases, flesh (or the lack thereof) is a central motif that marks female narrators’ escape from reality. These characters are on the extreme ends of this dichotomy — we think of Ottessa Moshfegh’s narrator in My Year of Rest and Relaxation, or Mona Awad’s cult in Bunny. Yet on the other end of the spectrum, Bitter Water Opera gives an account of a rebirth without flesh. Gia’s mundane and prosaic life offers an alternative perspective on creation. From the lack of formal structure to the omission of concrete, sensory objects, the narrative wanders away from the corporeal and enters a realm of terror and grace.  

Murals of charcoal drawings on the garage walls, a corpse in the middle of a pond, a crooked pear sapling — Gia longs for an eternal salvation in Marta’s incorporeality. To Gia, myths, folklores, and stories withstand materiality. But does Marta — and her lonesome, unwavering life — suffice? As Gia desperately clings onto either side of the spectrum to establish permanent justification for living, Nicolette Polek leaves her readers to explore the innermost existential questions through Gia’s gradual discovery of faith — or again the lack thereof. We follow Gia through a succinct (yet intriguing) account of miracles and decadence. Like Gia, Marta, or even Gia’s mother — we cannot help but ask ourselves: how do we look past who we are? Where are we heading upon acknowledging this inescapable fate of personhood? 

Polek’s narrative follows a number of fairytale and folklore tropes that are familiar to many. Yet in the most unexpected turns and corners she reveals the underlying vacancy that pervades our distant memory of these tales — the prince never shows up; the bog does not miraculously transform into a snowy palace; the princess remains asleep. Amidst the dreamlike picturesque reminiscent of works by Alice Rahon and Sylvia Townsend Warner lies an inexplicable dread — luscious tall grass swaying indifferently under a dark sky. Polek’s numerous allusions to earthly elements — clay, soil, sand, and dirt — are more than mere coincidences. In a sense, Polek approaches the feminine yearning for creation through void and negation, lack and omission. An enthralling, almost spiritual account, Bitter Water Opera speaks to the desire for self-creation through destruction.Nicolette Polek invites us to crack open a window that exits to the impossible — gardens, murals, and stairwells of an alien nostalgia. Bitter Water Opera asks its readers to grapple with the fleetingness and eternity of existence and to ponder what remains after the tea gets cold.