In Detail: Our September Monthly Read, Bad Habit by Alana S Portero
Here, Service95 Book Club gives a round-up of everything you need to know about Dua’s Monthly Read for September, Bad Habit by Alana S Portero…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alana S Portero is a Medieval historian, writer, playwright, LGBTQIA+ activist, and co-founder of the theatre company STRIGA. Her writings on feminism and LGTBQIA+ 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 Spain. A sensation when it was published in Spain, her debut novel Bad Habit became a bestseller and has won many 2023 awards, including the Vanity Fair Award for Best Novel, and the Cálamo Literary Award for Best Book of the Year. Alana lives in Madrid, Spain.
SYNOPSIS
An unnamed young Trans woman grows up in a working-class suburb that has no place for her. She discovers community and kinship in downtown Madrid, amid a dazzling party scene animated by charming junkies, glamorous pop divas and fallen angels. With each step she takes forward in the city, she finds herself confronted by an antagonism she does not yet know how to counter. In this thrilling and yet often frightening place, each decision can have the highest of stakes – and yet she knows that only she can forge a path forward to the life she truly wants to live.
Blistering and compassionate, Bad Habit by Alana S Portero is translated by Mara Faye Lethem. The book deftly illuminates the ties between gender and class, the search for identity, and the power of chosen family. Shimmering in its lyrical beauty and vivid in its realism, Bad Habit is a searing, mesmerising story of self-realisation that speaks to the outsider in all of us.
WHY WE LOVED IT
“I got actual chills when I read the opening scenes of this book. Beginning with her fallen angels – the boys who become junkies on the streets of San Blas – Alana S Portero’s vivid portrait of a young Trans girl growing up in 1980s Madrid had me hooked from the very first page.
“At its heart, Bad Habit is a beautiful story of someone coming to terms with who they are in an environment that doesn’t allow them to truly flourish. It’s about searching for – and finding in unexpected places – the people who help you grow. It’s a study on identity, love and acceptance, at a time of Spain’s own coming of age after decades of Franco’s dictatorship.
“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
WHAT OTHERS SAY
“I can’t help but feel that 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”
– Lauren J Joseph, The Guardian
“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
