La mala costumbre (English title: Bad Habit) is the 2023 debut novel by Spanish playwright and poet Alana S. Portero. A visceral and lyrical coming-of-age story, the book has become an international literary phenomenon, translated into over 17 languages. It explores the intersections of gender, class, and identity in post-Franco Spain. Plot Overview
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Before we even meet the protagonist’s interior world, Portero anchors us in the concrete and asphalt of San Blas. This is not the romanticized Madrid of Almudena Grandes or the chic boulevards of modern tourism. This is a post-industrial wasteland of brick housing projects, heroin (the caballo that claimed so many lives during the AIDS crisis), and a suffocating brand of machismo. La mala costumbre - Alana S. Portero.epub
Rating: 5/5 stars. Trigger warnings: Transphobia, self-harm, sexual violence, drug abuse, AIDS crisis.
Alternatively, if you just need a general overview of the book (based on its known content, as La mala costumbre is a well-known contemporary Spanish novel about growing up trans in a working-class neighborhood of Madrid), I can write that too. La mala costumbre (English title: Bad Habit )
If you love the melancholic grit of Pedro Almodóvar’s Law of Desire or the raw confessionals of Jean Genet, you will find a home here. Portero cites Pedro Lemebel (the Chilean queer writer) as a massive influence, and you can feel that. Like Lemebel, Portero uses the gutter as a pulpit. There is a deep Catholic iconography running through the novel—Virgins, wounds, martyrs—but Portero subverts it. The protagonist’s suffering is not redemptive for society; it is simply hers.
Alana S. Portero has written a eulogy for the girls who didn’t make it and a battle cry for those still hiding in their bedrooms, listening to their fathers yell. It is a brutal read, but a sacred one. It explores the intersections of gender, class, and
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