Nicolette Polek
Story Stream
Finding Yourself Is a Spectral Affair June 17, 2024
“If thou hast gone aside, being under thy husband, and if thou be defiled, and some man have lain with thee besides thy husband … the priest shall write these curses in a scroll, and he shall blot them out into the water of bitterness. And he shall m...
The Search for Reciprocation May 29, 2024
I’ve always been fond of conversion tales. When I was younger, whenever there was a lull during church services, I’d grab a Bible off the back of a pew and search for stories there. There are sixty-six books in the Bible, but I kept reading and rerea...
God’s Touch in Nicolette Polek’s 'Bitter Water Opera' May 14, 2024
Nicolette Polek’s debut novel Bitter Water Opera is slim, written in four fragmented parts. The novel tracks the first person narrator’s developing existential spiral, which is eventually recuperated by a religious reckoning. The first section follow...
On Nicolette Polek’s 'Bitter Water Opera' April 24, 2024
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 ...
On Nicolette Polek's 'Bitter Water Opera' April 23, 2024
In Nicolette Polek’s debut novel Bitter Water Opera, there is a woman who leaves her husband by taking one object from their apartment each day and stashing it in the base of an abandoned water tower. Her husband doesn’t notice his wife’s quiet, grad...
Nicolette Polek Found God in an Opera House April 22, 2024
Nicolette Polek’s long-awaited novel Bitter Water Opera is a sensuous banquet that ravishes while leaving you hungry for more. From the smell of ambergris and the taste of French peach pie, to the site of a dilapidated opera house in the process of ...
On Nicolette Polek’s “Bitter Water Opera” April 22, 2024
WHEN I FIRST moved to Los Angeles, I was enraptured—not by the sun, nor by the looming specter of celebrity, but by the novelty and variety of the landscape. Back in my suburban Maryland hometown, the terrain had been flat and monotonous; lawns, socc...
Art-Making in a Disenchanted Age April 19, 2024
Bitter Water Opera, the debut novel by Nicolette Polek published on Tuesday, asks exciting, original, and urgently relevant questions about the value and role of art. The book is a post-break-up story, whose depressed narrator first summons a whimsic...
