In old basement halls, where techno makes the walls, still marked by the violence of the last century, tremble, 19-year-old Nila meets like-minded individuals. Lines are drawn while socialism is preached, and for Nila, this dark mass is the escape from the Berlin high-rise where only refugees live, where the toilets are infested with silverfish and the walls are smeared with swastikas. Only in intoxication does she escape the memory of her dead mother, once a great feminist revolutionary, now just a fleeting spark in the eyes of her weary father. To anyone who asks, her family is Greek, not Afghan. Then Nila meets the American writer Marlowe Woods, who opens up a world of patrons and festivals for her, someone who has always wanted to write. Marlowe shares generously, but soon demands and expectations arise that far exceed what Nila can bear. "Good Girl" by Aria Aber is an ecstatically thumping ode to the lost intimacies of youth. It is a virtuoso debut novel and a harrowing portrait of a young artist caught in a whirlwind of sex, drugs, violence, emerging friendship, a disintegrating family, and grief.