Sign-In
Cart
The Key Biscayne Affair
Hardcover
Publisher Price: $28.00
ISBN13: 9780063470910
Publisher: Ecco Press
Published: Nov 10 2026
Pages: 208
Weight: 1.42
Language: English
Winner of the Herralde Novel Prize
A darkly funny coming-of-age novel where Florida's sun-drenched strangeness meets the dangers of derelict parenting and misplaced devotion
An eccentric Spanish philosophy professor relocates with his two children, a boy and a girl, from Boston to a gated island off the coast of Miami. The kids have come to the US to learn English and spend time with their father after a heated custody battle. But as the professor is embraced by a glittering social scene and his seemingly fun, innocent antics tip into recklessness, the children receive a very different kind of education.
In this lush, sharply observed novel, an unnamed, unreliable narrator remembers her surreal stay on Key Biscayne, where nobody lives unless they have something to hide. As the narrator is gradually drawn into the island's morally ambiguous world, putting her innocence at risk, she begins to overidentify with her father. She becomes not just witness but also accomplice to his erratic behavior, acquiescing to his efforts to isolate herself and her brother from their concerned mother, whose calls from Spain go unanswered.
The Key Biscayne Affair is a tender, disorienting, and deeply disquieting coming-of-age story disguised as a psychological thriller. Xita Rubert delivers a powerful meditation on childhood and the knotty truths that memory leaves behind.Also from
Rubert, Xita
Also in
General Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
Anniversaries, Volume 2: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, April 1968-August 1968
Johnson, Uwe
Paperback
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts
Plath, Sylvia
Paperback
Philip Roth: Novels 1967-1972 (Loa #158): When She Was Good / Portnoy's Complaint / Our Gang / The Breast
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
Selected Writings: Robert Musil: Young Torless, Three Women, the Perfecting of a Love, and Other Writings
Musil, Robert
Agee, Joel
Paperback