GOOD GIRL

An aspiring photographer bent on concealing her Afghan heritage becomes embroiled in the Berlin techno scene and a fraught relationship with an older man.

Nilab Haddadi, known by most of her friends as Nila, is the daughter of refugees. Her parents, who once lived prosperous lives as doctors in Kabul, fled Afghanistan before she was born. All Nilab knows is the life they subsequently carved out in Berlin, and it, by turn, embarrasses and infuriates her: Their building is run-down and littered with Nazi graffiti, neighbors eye her comings and goings suspiciously, and memories of how carefully her family had to present themselves after 9/11 to avoid being harassed still loom large. After returning home from a boarding school where no one knew her true origins, 18-year-old Nilab has no desire to stick around an apartment defined by her dead mother’s absence and her father’s disapproval. She escapes to a techno club she affectionately refers to as the Bunker, where she quickly falls into the orbit of 36-year-old Marlowe Woods, known throughout the underground scene as “the American writer who always carried speed.” Though he has a “kind-of girlfriend” when they meet and Nilab’s friends warn her against getting in too deep, there is a queasy inevitability to their union. Coming-of-age stories focused on a relationship with an older, ill-advised paramour are a time-honored tradition, but Marlowe’s red flags are so glaring from the outset that Nilab comes across as startlingly, almost doggedly naïve. Aber’s storytelling also often undercuts its own tensions: Nilab narrates the novel from an indeterminate future, dampening the emotional immediacy, and more than once Aber elides dramatic conversations between characters in favor of describing the emotional aftermath. Still, Aber’s vivid depiction of Berlin and the novel’s earnest wrestling with shame about desire and identity will be of interest to many readers.

A debut still in the process of finding itself—like its young protagonist.