Good Girl

Aber's debut follows Nila, the daughter of Afghan refugees, through Berlin's underground music scene in the year after her mother's death, and its opening chapters have been singled out as genuinely electric, a coming-of-age novel that earns its portrait of a young woman testing every boundary her upbringing set for her. Reviewers have noted the momentum doesn't fully sustain: the narrative's tensions occasionally undercut themselves in the back half, and the novel reads at points like a writer still locating her footing in long form after acclaimed poetry.