Description: Trapped in a working-class Madrid slum in the 1980s, a woman navigates the local party scene involving heroin and disco while searching for belonging in a potentially violent world where every choice can be fatal.
Brief description:
Alana S. Portero is a medieval historian, writer, playwright, LGBTQIA+ activist, and cofounder of the theatre company STRIGA. Her writings on feminism and LGBTQIA+ activism from the perspective of a trans woman have been featured in a number of international publications, including Agente provocador, elDiario.es, El Salto Diario, S Moda, and Vogue. She lives in Madrid.
Review Quotes:
"Affecting and evocative... [Bad Habit] sets out in clear, emotive language the everyday struggles - external but also internal - faced by trans people" - The Observer
"What a sublime novel . . . one of the most moving novels I have read in recent years . . . I read in an interview that Alana Portero wanted to write a universal novel. That is exactly what she has achieved, offering us a universal story we did not yet know--a universal truth we did not realize, before her, was also ours." - Édouard Louis, Author of The End of Eddy
"Such a beautiful novel, also cruel and full of redemption, about the journey we take to become who we truly are, and about the people that come with us to fill in the blanks." - Elena Medel, Author of The Wonders
"Raw, unapologetic, and ingenious in its expressions of pain, Bad Habit bravely bares the scars of being queer in an unaccepting society while illuminating unexpected pockets of hope and tenderness. . . . Hidden within this heartrending story is the healing power of caregiving within women's circles, offering novel ways to consider feminine alliances, just as the narrator reclaims her identity as 'every woman.'" - Booklist
"I felt Bad Habit in the throat like a faraway song I caught myself humming. Portero's elegant storytelling catches a celestial light, illuminating the body in ways beyond language." - Eloghosa Osunde, author of Vagabonds!
[Written] with such a fine sensitivity to the balance of politics and poetry, community and childhood ... [Bad Habit is] an exemplary and fresh example of the trans bildungsroman ... a novel that could very well serve as a surrogate mother for future children who grow up lonely and trans. - Washington Post
"This is an important book, one that reminds us of the often painful and treacherous reality of growing up trans. At times the story screams an almost unbearable loneliness. But it also soars with the euphoria that comes with finding your true self. You'll delight in the fiendishly wicked sisterhood of the city's street queens, outcasts and misfits while singing your heart out to the sounds that spill out of the clubs and into the plazas. This is a book to savour. Enjoy every word" - Dua Lipa
"Just as Baldwin's writing is weighty with the pulpit rhetoric he first engaged as a young Pentecostal minister, so Portero's style is inextinguishably Catholic... Bad Habit, a work of deep humility, spilling over with prose rich as double cream, will function much the same, as a lodestar for readers, staggering bruised towards their own personhood." - The Guardian
"I urge you, read Alana S. Portero's Bad Habit to fully grasp the degree of adversity, pain, and danger endured by those growing-up trans." - Pedro Almodóvar, Two-time Academy Award-Winning Filmmaker
"A novel that intertwines LGTBIQ+ activism with humour, beauty with pain, the dissociation of the interior with exterior world. . . . The most talked-about debut of the year." - Time Out Spain
"At once brutal, tender, and vulnerable, Bad Habit is told in gorgeous, poignant vignettes that paint a portrait of a trans girl's coming of age in working-class Madrid. Once I started, I couldn't put it down. Let's be real--I would follow Portero's charming and resilient narrator anywhere. There is violence, yes, but there is also beauty, warmth, and care. Full of unforgettable characters, mothers, and connections, Portero has written a masterpiece, an ode, a life-giving story of trans affirmation. This book is everything and more." - Marisa Crane, author of I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself
"Bad Habit is queer fiction at its painful, honest, celebratory best, rejoicing in the beauty of trans lives while simultaneously acknowledging the violence that the world too often thrusts upon them." - BookPage (starred review)
"Alana S. Portero's Bad Habit is a tender, evocative coming of age story about learning to live authentically. Full of loving affection and quiet betrayals, this novel captures the challenges inherent to finding autonomy and queer community. Bad Habit is a powerful book about growing up trans." - Isle McElroy, author of People Collide