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Much to the chagrin of her widowed father, Nila Haddadi is no good girl.
But Nila cant help herself.
My desire, though nascent, already felt so profound that it seemed close to hatred, she says.
Sometimes I lied that I was Colombian, she says, sometimes I was from Spain or Israel.
This evasiveness feels like inherited; her mother, she recalls, once claimed to be French.
Aber is an award-winning poet who writes in her third language.
Like Nila, she was born in Germany to refugees from Afghanistan and grew up speaking Farsi and German.
Its narrator is of both worlds and neither, and the self-other divide lives inside her.
Good Girlcaptures the ache of Muslim girlhood and the vertigo of never feeling quite at home.
Meanwhile, she admires her nearly indistinguishable white friends.
The self-scrutiny and self-recrimination remain; the maturity is optional.
In the decade since, has Nila left Germany and become an artist?
Aber doesnt tell us.
Nilas fuzzy retrospection is especially frustrating in moments featuring her toxic relationship with Marlowe.
Over time, he becomes physically violent.
Nila eventually moves in with him anyway.
Aber conjures place with great specificity; her descriptions feel alive.
She is convinced shes ugly but is systematically told shes beautiful.
Her friends vaguely discuss gentrification and Marxism.
Aber ingests the millennial playbook and spits out something that happens to be more interesting.
Anti-Muslim incidents havemore than doubledthere since October 7, 2023.
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