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Fear and Loathing in Berlin
An Afghan girl seeks solace in sex and drugs in an ambitious but bloated debut.
The narrator in Aria Aber’s debut novel rebels in all the ways that a 19-year-old born to Afghan refugees in Berlin can: She is rarely home, skips class, takes drugs, has sex, dreams of becoming a photographer, and frequents a nightclub she calls the Bunker, a recognizable stand-in for Berghain. “The self-scrutiny and self-recrimination remain; the maturity is optional.” That is certainly one way to describe Good Girl, yet another novel that ends, like Normal People, with a main character planning to pursue a graduate art degree abroad rather than toughing it out at home. The novel’s many uncomfortable sex scenes reveal the bedroom as the place where women negotiate power with men and where even consensual encounters tip toward imbalance but don’t add to these familiar observations.
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