A review by aront
Your Love Is Not Good by Johanna Hedva

2.0

Another boring book about insipid, privileged people written by a pretty decent US writer. It seems young US writers are so caught up in their blinkered ideology while being anesthetized by their wealth and privilege, that they have lost sight of reality.

If you can afford to get yourself into a quarter million dollars of debt, and live between Berlin and Los Angeles (as does the main character, and it seems the author themself) you are privileged, no matter how you “identify”. Sure you aren’t the 1% characters, each of whom you disdainfully call “white” girls (are you sure you”re not misgendering them, missy), but you’re better off than 99% of the rest of humanity. Hence your so-called “artistic suffering” comes off petty and whiney, best not put on paper, because it makes you sound pretentious.

I want the couple hours I invested in this book back, so recommending you don’t waste your time. If you want to read a really great, semi-autobiographical first novel about becoming a young person becoming a transgressive artist, read Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.