Review: "Good Girl" by Aria Aber

Good Girl by Aria Aber
Published January 2025 via Hogarth
★★★

For years, Nila has been telling those who ask that her family is Greek—or Italian, or French; it doesn't really matter as long as she doesn't tell the truth. Born and raised in Berlin, she's used to the daily grind of urban poverty, used to racist micro- and macroaggressions, used to seeing her uncles driving taxis throughout the city, and used to their disappointment when they see her out and about and being something other than a rule-abiding daughter.

What did I feel when i saw her in the afternoon light setting over the gray cityscape? Love, yes, love. And then, sure as a clock: I felt shame. (loc. 2902*)

By the time Good Girl opens, Nila has given up on being that good girl; she's drifting through university and working under the table to get around the income limitations imposed by her father's benefits, but mostly she's spending her time in a drug-fuelled haze in various clubs. And so she meets Marlowe, a washed-up writer whose thrall extends far beyond his talent.

I'm eternally curious about books set in contemporary Germany (it's so much easier, at least in English, to find books set during WWII), and this fits the bill handily. I don't know how much, if any, reflects Aber's own experience growing up in Germany, but this is a Berlin of artists living in Altbau buildings, and clubs where anything goes, and kebab shops and graffiti and politicians looking the other way when violence hits immigrant communities.

Nila is a tricky one. So much of the book is her seeing the thing that she should do, or at least the thing that might hurt less, and then turning the other way. So much of the book is another club and another way to get high; so much of the book is leaning into those things and people that hurt and hurt and hurt some more. There was a point, midway through, where I thought something would change and she would be able to move on, but instead it is back to drugs and clubs and bruises.

There is a substantial reader population for whom this will work very, very well—the grittiness and the grime and Nila's general lost-ness for much of the book. I found it to be relatively slow going, though, partly I think because of the intentional repetitiveness to the club scenes (the club-scene scenes, if you will). I was ready for a catalyst well before Nila was. The writing is there, though, so even if the plot wasn't entirely for me, I'd read more from Aber in the future.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.