LoveReading Says
Our unnamed narrator is a lyrical and sensitive storyteller, conjuring her world with jolting metaphors, sharp wit, and tender poetry. She doesn’t hold back any punches on brutality, but she also savours moments where she can elevate humans’ ability to be soft and lovely.
Our unnamed narrator is a young trans woman, growing up in a hand-to-mouth suburb in Madrid, ever-watchful and sensitive to the ways in which her neighbours model and police gender, sexuality, class. As a child she is drawn to figures like the witch known as The Wig, and the gentle trans woman Margarita, who her neighbours treat with respect, but outsiders mock even in her most vulnerable moments. We’re moved and scared on her behalf, as our narrator navigates all her coming-of-age milestones on such risky margins: her first tender kiss, (‘That kiss, my first, was prefaced by a rush of thoughts of every horror story I had witnessed or heard in my life about people life me. [...] ‘“You like good?” asked Jay, with mistaken words but with such perfect, charming delivery that it set off my bad habit of crying over everything.’) As she finds a way to live a double life in downtown Madrid, playing at being macho son by day and seductive nymph by night, she meets a cast of her own supportive angels, like the owner of a gay cafe and a close-knit community of older sex workers.
Billy Lindon
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Alana S. Portero Press Reviews
‘I urge you, read Bad Habit to fully grasp the degree of adversity, pain, and danger endured for virtue of growing-up trans’ Pedro Almodóvar
'The book that everyone is reading … tells the story of a working-class transgender woman full of rage and beauty, pain and poetry' New York Times
‘Portero’s elegant storytelling catches a celestial light, illuminating the body in ways beyond language’ Eloghosa Osunde, author of Vagabonds!
'Portero’s prose is so commanding – she’s drawn a painful yet unquestionably hopeful novel' Nicola Dinan, author of Bellies
‘Leaves you stunned … Devastating yet beautiful … A special and unique creation’ Travis Alabanza, author of None of the Above
‘Elegant and brutal’ Morgan M Page, author of Boys Don’t Cry
‘Incredibly moving, completely absorbing … This is an unforgettable story, told with frankness and vulnerability. Believe the hype!’ Okechukwu Nzelu, author of Here Again Now
‘Such a beautiful novel … about the journey we take to become who we truly are’ Elena Medel, author of The Wonders
‘Vivid, compassionate and compulsive' Rachel Dawson, author of Neon Roses
'Beautifully-written, heartbreaking and sometimes comedic’ Tawseef Khan, author of Determination
‘Bad Habit is a ballad, a quest, a revelation. It made me weep more than once’ Saba Sams, author of Send Nudes
‘A singular and raw voice … The most talked-about debut of the year’ Time Out Spain
‘Bad Habit is an engulfing novel. Portero had me captivated with her visceral prose’ Avni Doshi, author of Burnt Sugar
‘Brutal, tender, and vulnerable … Portero has written a masterpiece, an ode, a life-giving story of trans affirmation’ Marisa Crane, author of I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself
