Bitter Water Opera, the debut novel by the American writer Nicolette Polek, begins with the invocation of a muse. Gia, the narrator, is recently single and on leave from the film studies department where she teaches. Insomnia and depression weigh on her, petrifying her creativity, not to say her mood: she won’t talk to anyone, not even her own mother. It’s not until Gia, wandering about a library archive, comes across something that vaults her back toward life—a photograph of Marta Becket, the American choreographer and dancer who passed in 2017—that she has found the person with whom she wishes to speak. Phone calls and emails out of the question, Gia writes her a letter.
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