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A reiteration of interrupted girlhood—a tale as old as time—where a young woman falls under the spell of a mercurial older man who inevitably uses, abuses, or discards her (see, Jean Rhys� Quartet, Deepti Kapoor’s A Bad Character, Caroline O'Donoghue’s Promising Young Woman, Coco Mellors� Cleopatra and Frankenstein). I was hoping for a fresh take on this trope, but Good Girl follows a pretty predictable arc: Nila spirals until something abruptly jolts her back into the world of the living.

Since my review is mostly critical, I do want to encourage prospective readers to check the book out for themselves or at least look at some more positive takes.

Much of this novel feels like an exercise in performing "sad girlhood." Nila is the kind of supposedly unknowable protagonist who is enamored with her own perceived depths, the kind of character who watches Lolita, Girl, Interrupted, Thirteen, and The Virgin Suicides and thinks, that’s literally me. This could have worked if the book had more self-awareness, but instead, it leans into Nila’s self-mythologizing. There are plenty of scenes emphasizing her je ne sais quoi & her vague yet curated brand of angst that come across as aestheticized navel-gazing (more than genuine introspection).

For a book set in Berlin, it also feels strangely tailored to an American or Anglicized audience, flattening the city into something more digestible. And then there’s Marlowe, the guy Nila fixates on—except calling him a "character" feels generous. He’s less of a person and more of a series of nasty traits strung together, his supposed charm is non-existent, as he comes across as a cringy looser who thinks his pseudo-intellectual takes are edgy or deep. It’s hard to believe so many people would even bother talking to him, let alone become obsessed with him (nila most of all).

Another issue: the novel’s retroactive queerness. Nila, the daughter of Afghan refugees, spends much of the book pushing against familial piety, respectability, and the constraints of femininity. But after one girl makes it clear that “people like us� don’t have a future, Nila just drops all interest in women. From then on, the few thoughts she spares other women are often framed in relation to Marlowe. The novel never really explores her potential internalized homophobia or repressed desire, which feels like a missed opportunity. If Nila is so committed to her "brat era," why is queerness the one thing she refuses to even entertain? And queerness aside, why not explore why she may feel so jealous and/or disinterested in other women?

The characters in general feel like they don’t have real histories—just a few cinematographic glimpses into Nila’s past. Even in a film, this kind of storytelling would come across as pretty but empty (I kept thinking of directors like Emerald Fennell & Sam Levinson, or shallow, wasted-youth films like Palo Alto).

And then there’s the scene relaed to the Biennale. Nila takes a taxi driven by a Tigray man who tells her that Ethiopia was colonized by Italy. It’s obviously meant to inform (presumably American) readers, but the way it’s delivered feels forced. Given Italy’s Kafkaesque bureaucracy, an immigrant working as a licensed taxi driver—especially in Veneto—would sadly be pretty unlikely (if the scene had taken place in Rome or Milan, maybe it would have been more realistic). Ethiopia didn’t yet have its own pavilion at the Biennale at the time the novel is set (on this note, the year this book is set in also feels vague�), it would have made more sense for Nila or someone to comment on that absence rather than shoehorning in this exposition via a taxi driver. During this holiday we also have this very clichéd interaction with an older woman who is antagonistic towards Nila because she envies her youth (or some such reason)...sigh.

I also wanted more ambiguity. For all the novel’s commentary on respectability, it still ends up reading like a cautionary tale where the Bad Guy is clearly a creep from the get-go (i recently watched Lilya 4-ever and there i could understand why lilya fails to see how sus her supposed ‘saviour� is). I was more interested in Nila’s time at boarding school, her grief or anhedonia following her mother’s death. Her photography—an attempt, it seems, to make her into an artist—never quite feels convincing (i wanted the hunger of Lu in Rachel Lyon's Self-Portrait with Boy).

Despite all my criticisms, Good Girl was not a bad book. The author’s prose, while not particularly striking or witty, is breezy and compelling at times. I also thought that Nila’s shame, particularly in connection to being Afghan, was portrayed with empathy. The author doesn’t condemn Nila for wanting to rebrand herself as a more "acceptable" other, reinventing herself as Greek. The exoticization remains (others making iffy comments about her appearance), and although she’s no longer directly subjected to the scorn and suspicion levelled at Muslim communities, she remains exposed to the racism and alt-right views that can be found amidst frequenters of supposedly alternative scenes like clubs and raves.

Her strained encounters with her father were painfully realistic, and the author succeeds in capturing her conflicting and difficult-to-parse feelings toward him. Despite his actions and her rejection of the values he stands for and that she grew up with, to sever herself completely from him or their neighborhood is impossible, no matter how entrapped she feels by them.
Also, kudos to that opening scene—it felt very cinematic (in a good way)

Ultimately, Good Girl suffers in comparison to other "sad girl" novels (Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi, Luster by Raven Leilani, Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier, You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth by Xiaolu Guo, Win Me Something by Kyle Lucia Wu) that allow for more nuance in their characters� flaws and self-destruction. I can see this appealing to readers who enjoyed Elena Ferrante’s The Lying Life of Adults or All Night Pharmacy, or readers drawn to books about messy, party-going characters—from the poorly aged Story of My Life by Jay McInerney to more recent releases like The Arena of the Unwell by Liam Konemann.