Good Girl
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 ... The book’s not without wobbles, but Aber, an award-winning poet, strikes gold here ... A bildungsroman, gorgeously packed with Nila’s epiphanies on literature and philosophy, a tale of seductive risks and the burdens of diaspora.
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Exhilarating ... It’s thrilling to see her turn major poetic gifts toward the sweep of this Künstlerroman, the story of a young woman becoming other than she used to be. While reading Good Girl, I thought of James Baldwin, writing in a letter that 'the place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.' With her novel, Aber has made the world more spacious: More people will find a place to fit.
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The novel is not driven by a forceful plot ... Aber constructs a vivid world in this novel, one that is tough and relentless; her Berlin feels grimy and smells terrible. She unwinds complex histories and legacies — of people, places and politics alike — with a deft touch. It can become tedious, though, to be trapped in the head of such an insistently self-destructive person
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