Kivelli Fotiathi is a wealthy, beautiful young woman enjoying the perks of privilege and daydreams of romance in her home city of Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey). But the year is 1922, and her world is about to change catastrophically, when a massive fire destroys the city, effectively ending the Greco-Turkish War begun in 1919. This historical information comes out slowly in the novel, but it helps to know about the tragedy right from the start.

Tess Fragoulis explores the effects of the disaster on Kivelli, a woman used to a life of ease and luxury. Along with many other survivors, Kivelli ends up in the Greek city of Piraeus, possessing little more than her life and the will to carry on. She has lost her family and her identity, but she does have her singing voice, which she uses to save herself from Kyria Effie, a brothel owner who takes her in and plans to sell her virginity to the highest bidder.

The novel has a promising premise, but Fragoulis opts for overwrought prose and a melodramatic plot. The chronology is quite confusing, moving quickly through Kivelli’s attempts to free herself from Kyria’s clutches and those of anyone else (usually men) who try to control her. There is little reference to weather or the seasons, so it’s difficult to tell when the events in the story occur. When the novel’s rather brief overall time frame is eventually made clear, it comes as a surprise, because the action seems to span a much longer period.

Perhaps the oddest aspect of the book is Kivelli’s transition from cossetted rich girl to someone who brazenly uses sex to get what she wants. It’s not that such a change is impossible, but it happens here with minimal interior development. The title refers to Kivelli, but the underlying message is that, apart from sex and singing, the goodtime girl is not having a particularly good time herself. She forms a few relationships, but all the men in her life seem to let her down. And her few female friends have complex problems of their own. The novel pivots on a love (or lust) triangle among Kivelli, a handsome musician, and a married woman who secretly composes music. Fragoulis attempts to examine the relationship between creativity and attraction, but the characters are too flat to carry the load.

The Goodtime Girl is worth reading for local colour, including details of food and fashion. But the dearth of psychological depth hampers what could have been a truly moving story.