Bitter Water Opera Audiobook By Nicolette Polek cover art

Bitter Water Opera

A Novel

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Bitter Water Opera

By: Nicolette Polek
Narrated by: Alex Picard
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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? 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 ultimately brings 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?

©2024 Nicolette Polek (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Magical Realism

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I read this book on the recommendation of a friend. It’s not my favorite genre and so I didn’t really find it too interesting. It is a relatively short book though. The protagonist is Gia who see,s to have gotten a bit lost in life, having recently ended a relationship though she seems to partially regret that. She is very listless, oversleeping and not being sure what to do when she reads about a ballerina named Marta who had founded an opera house in California’s Death Valley some decades ago. Gia becomes somewhat obsessed with Marta and Gia sees Marta’s ghost. After some reflection eventually Gia travels to Death Valley to see the Opera House. There are some preservationists working to conserve it but they seem to be curmudgeons. My favorite part of the story was Gia reflecting on how Marta’s spirit spread like a mustard seed, as her ashes were spread about the desert with a night bloom plant.

Woman tries to find herself

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