Your Love Is Not Good

Hedva (On Hell) paints an unsettling if messy portrait of a queer biracial artist reckoning with the ways whiteness pervades her work and desires. Born to a Korean father and a white mother, the unnamed narrator has become “bitter about being neither one total thing nor the other.” In trying to come to terms with her complex identity, she develops a masochistic infatuation with a wealthy Iranian art student who “act[s] like a white girl,” and hires a Japanese Korean dominatrix for “antihumiliation” services. As a white-passing painter, the narrator wonders if her “self-portraits count as portraits of a white person.” Later, she meets a beautiful white woman whom she refers to as “The Twin” at a party and enlists her as a model. Success takes her and her new muse from L.A. to Berlin, but after a Black artist calls for a boycott of commercial art galleries, she reexamines her aspirations. Loosely structured around various artistic concepts (sections are headed with definitions of chiaroscuro, sfumato, etc.), the narrative itself is a bit disjointed, but Hedva’s bold brushstrokes give readers a clear view into her protagonist’s mind and heart. Though the various parts don’t quite cohere into a satisfying narrative, Hedva is consistently savvy and surprising on the page. Agent: Clare Mao, Europa Content. (May)