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A Poignant Coming-of-Age Tale of Identity, Sisterhood, and Community Set in Madrid
by Alana S. Portero
Combining the raw realism and vulnerability of Shuggie Bain and Detransition, Baby with the poignant sensibility of Pedro Almodóvar, a staggering coming-of-age novel deeply rooted in the struggles of a trans woman growing up in Madrid.
Anchored by the voice of its sweet and defiant narrator, Bad Habit casts a trans woman's trying youth as a heartfelt odyssey. Raised in an animated yet impoverished blue-collar neighborhood in 1980s Madrid, Alana S. Portero's protagonist struggles to find her place. As the city around her changes–the heroin epidemic that ravages Madrid through the '80s and '90s, rallying calls of worker solidarity and the pulsing beat of the city's night scene– she becomes increasingly detached from the world and, most crucially, herself.
Yet through her eyes, the streets and people of Madrid are illuminated by a poetry absent from everyday life. And by this guiding light she begins to plot her own course, from Margarita, the local trans woman whose unspoken kinship both captivates and frightens her, to Jay, her first love and source of an inevitable heartbreak, to the irrepressible diva Caramel. As she forges ahead, she sets her compass to a personal north star: endeavoring to find herself. But with each step forward, she is confronted by a violence she doesn't yet know how to counter; in this exciting, often terrifying, world each choice is truly a matter of life and death.
With her first novel, Alana S. Portero strikingly underscores the ties between gender and class, the search for identity, and the power of a found family, sisterhood, and community. Gentle but blistering, Bad Habit is a mesmerizing story of self-realization that speaks to the outsider in all of us.
"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)
"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
"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
This information about Bad Habit was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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.
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