Good Girl: A Novel Audiobook

Quotes

• Aria Aber’s Good Girl is a novel of overwhelming and conflicted love—for persons, for histories, for artistic creation, for Berlin. Her poet’s eye makes a thermal map of emotional landscapes, lighting up passion, desire, desperate hope, and violence, and showing how difficult they can be to distinguish in the crucible of experience. Rarely has the wildness and bewilderment of youth been conveyed with such richly textured heat.

  — Garth Greenwell, award-winning author of Cleanness

• Aria Aber’s stunning Good Girl is a novel of longing and tenderness . . . I disappeared into the many overlapping and colliding worlds of this book and emerged with a glistening, vibrating, beautifully exhausted heart—newly alive to the complexities of love and family and becoming ourselves.

  — Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of Splinters

• Aria Aber’s stunning Good Girl is a novel of longing and tenderness. . . . I disappeared into the many overlapping and colliding worlds of this book and emerged with a glistening, vibrating, beautifully exhausted heart—newly alive to the complexities of love and family and becoming ourselves.

  — Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of Splinters

• Aria Aber's debut is a novel to be transported and moved by, full as it is of many charms, from its jeweled prose to its evocations of history-haunted Berlin to its portrait of a young Muslim artist finding her way. Good Girl is radiant with longing, eroticism, and beauty.

  — Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different, finalist for the National Book Award

• “Aria Aber’s Good Girl is a haunting exploration of identity and desire. Nila's journey through historic and scintillating Berlin, marked by profound loneliness and a relentless pursuit of self-discovery, makes this novel both compelling and unforgettable. The book’s poignant reflection on the urban experience is a testament to Aber's immense storytelling talent, ensuring Good Girl remains as remarkable and timeless as the very nature of fiction itself.

  — Morgan Talty, author of Fire Exit

• Good Girl dives heart first into one of the art’s great crises: that the great searing ecstasies of youth should form us before we have the psychospiritual maturity to articulate them. Usually writing this good is realized through a gauzy patina of recollection, but in Good Girl the bass beat is still full in your chest, the coke drip’s still a numbing bitter in your throat. Aber’s ear is so remarkably good you hardly even notice she’s building this great symphony of textures, mosaics within mosaics.

  — Kaveh Akbar, New York Times bestselling author of Martyr!

• In Good Girl, pleasure is textured, surprising, and treated with utter seriousness.

  — Raven Leilani, New York Times bestselling author of Luster

• A novel of longing and tenderness, a piercing Künstlerroman that understands home as a heartbeat and a heartache, writing into the ache and daily metronome of exile. It’s a love song and a torch song for Berlin—like an ode to a body full of chronic pain, this is me and it also hurts me. I disappeared into the many overlapping and colliding worlds of this book and emerged with a glistening, vibrating, beautifully exhausted heart—newly alive to the complexities of love and family and becoming ourselves. I loved this book.

  — Leslie Jamison, New York Times bestselling author of Splinters

• Aria Aber’s Good Girl is a novel of overwhelming and conflicted love—for persons, for histories, for artistic creation, for Berlin. Rarely has the wildness and bewilderment of youth been conveyed with such richly textured heat.

  — Garth Greenwell, award-winning author of Cleanness

• “Good Girl charts with more precision and poetry than any novel I know the heavy inheritance that children of immigrants carry. Stunning, suspenseful, boldly defiant, and masterfully crafted, I only put this novel down to marvel at its prose. Aria Aber’s debut novel achieves the impossible task of making whole a life split between expectation and self-fulfillment, somehow transmuting shame itself in the process. I’m haunted by the painful truth at the center of Good Girl: that the process of breaking free inevitably breaks the self.

  — Fatima Farheen Mirza, New York Times bestselling author of A Place for Us

• Aria Aber's debut is a novel to be transported and moved by, full as it is of many charms, from its jeweled prose to its evocations of history-haunted Berlin to its portrait of a young Muslim artist finding her way.

  — Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different, finalist for the National Book Award

• “A haunting exploration of identity and desire. . . . compelling and unforgettable. The book’s poignant reflection on the urban experience is a testament to Aber's immense storytelling talent, ensuring Good Girl remains as remarkable and timeless as the very nature of fiction itself.

  — Morgan Talty, author of Fire Exit

• She explores the intergenerational sting of what it means to be a ‘good girl’ culturally, sexually, and socially. Her masterful prose guides the reader down the back alleys of Berlin, inviting the reader into a world all of her own making.

  — Marlowe Granados, filmmaker and author of Happy Hour

• Good Girl dives heart-first into one of the art’s great crises: that the great searing ecstasies of youth should form us before we have the psychospiritual maturity to articulate them. Usually writing this good is realized through a gauzy patina of recollection, but in Good Girl the bass beat is still full in your chest, the coke drip’s still a numbing bitter in your throat. Aber’s ear is so remarkably good you hardly even notice she’s building this great symphony of textures, mosaics within mosaics.

  — Kaveh Akbar, New York Times bestselling author of Martyr!

• At once euphoric and despairing, philosophical and poetic, Good Girl is a heartbreaking song of youth and desire and violence and history and the unbearable solitude of displacement.

  — Jamil Jan Kochai, author of The Haunting of Hajji Hotak, finalist for the National Book Award

• “Good Girl charts with more precision and poetry than any novel I know the heavy inheritance that children of immigrants carry. Stunning, suspenseful, boldly defiant, and masterfully crafted, I only put this novel down to marvel at its prose.

  — Fatima Farheen Mirza, New York Times bestselling author of A Place for Us

• Aria Aber's debut is a novel to be transported and moved by, full as it is of many charms, from its jeweled prose to its evocations of history-haunted Berlin to its portrait of a young Muslim artist finding her way. Good Girl is radiant with longing and beauty.

  — Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different, finalist for the National Book Award

• A haunting exploration of identity and desire. . . . compelling and unforgettable. The book’s poignant reflection on the urban experience is a testament to Aber's immense storytelling talent, ensuring Good Girl remains as remarkable and timeless as the very nature of fiction itself.

  — Morgan Talty, author of Fire Exit

• Usually writing this good is realized through a gauzy patina of recollection, but in Good Girl the bass beat is still full in your chest, the coke drip’s still a numbing bitter in your throat. Aber’s ear is so remarkably good you hardly even notice she’s building this great symphony of textures, mosaics within mosaics.

  — Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!

• A novel of longing and tenderness . . . a love song and a torch song for Berlin. I disappeared into the many overlapping and colliding worlds of this book and emerged with a glistening, vibrating, beautifully exhausted heart—newly alive to the complexities of love and family and becoming ourselves. I loved this book.

  — Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters

• A stunning coming-of-age story . . . a remarkable achievement.

  — Publishers Weekly, starred review

• I disappeared into the many overlapping and colliding worlds of this book and emerged with a glistening, vibrating, beautifully exhausted heart. . . . I loved this book.

  — Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters

• Aber’s ear is so remarkably good you hardly even notice she’s building this great symphony of textures, mosaics within mosaics.

  — Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!

• Rarely have the wildness and bewilderment of youth been conveyed with such richly textured heat.

  — Garth Greenwell, author of Small Rain

• Good Girl charts with more precision and poetry than any novel I know the heavy inheritance that children of immigrants carry. It is stunning, suspenseful, boldly defiant, and masterfully crafted; I only put this novel down to marvel at its prose.

  — Fatima Farheen Mirza, author of A Place for Us

• In Good Girl, pleasure is textured, surprising, and treated with utter seriousness.

  — Raven Leilani, author of Luster

• Aria Aber’s debut is a novel to be transported and moved by, full as it is of many charms, from its jeweled prose to its evocations of history-haunted Berlin to its portrait of a young Muslim artist finding her way.

  — Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different

• A haunting exploration of identity and desire, and a testament to Aber’s immense storytelling talent, ensuring Good Girl remains as remarkable and timeless as the very nature of fiction itself.

  — Morgan Talty, author of Fire Exit

• A heartbreaking song of youth and desire and violence and history and the unbearable solitude of displacement.

  — Jamil Jan Kochai, author of The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories