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.
Affecting and poetic ... In a marketplace of often narrowly defined literary categories, Portero’s book — like the best books that feature trans characters — shows us that a "trans novel" can actually be anything it wants to be. Bad Habit is about identity, yes, but in its keenly observed realism, it’s also a family story of parents and children, and at the same time, it offers a fresh angle on narratives of the working class. And undoubtedly, it is a tale of a city.
Portero balances long, meaty passages of self-reflection with vivid scenes grounded in sensory detail. The resulting mix reads like a fictional memoir ... Sometimes Mara Faye Lethem’s translation feels a bit clunky; occasional oddly constructed sentences may take a moment to untangle. But this hardly matters, because the prose overall is so fresh. The protagonist’s ability to see herself and the people in her life both up close and from a distance is irresistible. Bad Habit is queer fiction at its painful, honest, celebratory best.
Raw, unapologetic, and ingenious in its expressions of pain ... Hidden within this heartrending story is the healing power of caregiving within women’s circles, offering novel ways to consider feminine alliances.