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    Bad Habit: A Novel
    Bad Habit: A Novel
    Bad Habit: A Novel
    Audiobook5 hours

    Bad Habit: A Novel

    Written by Alana S. Portero

    Narrated by Alexandra Grey

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Dua Lipa's September Book Club Pick!

    Included in The Guardian's Best Translated Fiction of 2024

    ""[Bad Habit] shows us that a 'trans novel' can actually be anything it wants to be."" –New York Times

    ""A novel that could very well serve as a surrogate mother for future children who grow up lonely and trans."" –Washington Post

    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, 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 sisterhood and community. Gentle but blistering, Bad Habit is a mesmerizing story of self-realization that speaks to the outsider in all of us.  

    Translated from the Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateApr 23, 2024
    ISBN9780063336148
    Bad Habit: A Novel
    Author

    Alana S. Portero

    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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    4/5

    32 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I’m happy that this book randomly showed up in my feed and I listened to it! Thank you algorithm gods, well done!
    • 5/5
      What an amazing! Totally sad. Totally lovely book. If you're trans, you should read it!
    • 5/5
      Words picked like the most delicate flowers on a field beneath a world on fire, choking on its toxicity, yet exhaling a beauty that feels like a cure for just a moment. Thank you Alana.