Good Girl
A Novel
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2.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
“An exhilarating debut novel” (R.O. Kwon, The New York Times Book Review) about the daughter of Afghan refugees and her year of self-discovery—a portrait of the artist as a young woman set in a Berlin that can’t escape its history
A girl can get in almost anywhere, even if she can’t get out.
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION • LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • A BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: TIME, Electric Lit, The Skinny
“A no-bullsh*t, must-read debut.”—Kaveh Akbar
“Kaleidoscopic, full of style and soul.”—Raven Leilani
“Aber writes with . . . masterful precision.”—Leila Lalami, The Atlantic
"Once in a blue moon a debut novel comes along, announcing a voice quite unlike any other, with a layered story and sentences that crackle and pop, begging to be read aloud. Aria Aber’s splendid Good Girl introduces just such a voice . . . Aber, an award-winning poet, strikes gold here, much like Kaveh Akbar did in last year’s acclaimed Martyr!"—Los Angeles Times
In Berlin’s artistic underground, where techno and drugs fill warehouses still pockmarked from the wars of the twentieth century, nineteen-year-old Nila at last finds her tribe. Born in Germany to Afghan parents, raised in public housing graffitied with swastikas, drawn to philosophy, photography, and sex, Nila has spent her adolescence disappointing her family while searching for her voice as a young woman and artist.
Then in the haze of Berlin’s legendary nightlife, Nila meets Marlowe, an American writer whose fading literary celebrity opens her eyes to a life of personal and artistic freedom. But as Nila finds herself pulled further into Marlowe’s controlling orbit, ugly, barely submerged racial tensions begin to roil Germany—and Nila’s family and community. After a year of running from her future, Nila stops to ask herself the most important question: Who does she want to be?
A story of love and family, raves and Kafka, staying up all night and surviving the mistakes of youth, Good Girl is the virtuosic debut novel by a celebrated young poet and, now, a major new voice in fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Aber, who won the Whiting Award for her poetry collection, Hard Damage, makes her fiction debut with a stunning coming-of-age story set amid Berlin's underground art and music scene. Nila, the daughter of Afghan refugees, was born shortly after Germany's reunification in the city's "ghetto-heart." A self-described "small rat," she grows into a wild child, ashamed of her parents' poor grasp of the language and of her impoverished immigrant neighborhood, where cobwebs and swastika graffiti adorn the elevators of her building. She invents fictional identities at her all-girls Catholic boarding school, alternately claiming to be Greek, Colombian, or Israeli, and discovers a love for Kafka and photography. At 19, she keeps up her "pathological habit" of lying about her identity with a goup of dance club kids, with whom she takes acid, amphetamines, and ecstasy. She also develops a toxic relationship with Marlowe Woods, 36, a fixture on the techno music scene whose bright early career as a novelist has stalled. Aber casts Nila's struggle to find herself against a turbulent backdrop of racial tensions, including the murder of Afghan brothers in their bakery, attacks on women in hijabs, and Germans' xenophobic fear of people with a "southern look." In the process, Aber offers readers both a piercing look into Nila's psyche and an acute sense of place. It's a remarkable achievement.
