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A Novel
by Cynthia Weiner
A dazzling novel about one young woman's summer of infinite possibility ...
It was the summer of 1986, when the girl was found dead in Central Park behind the Metropolitan Museum—half-naked, legs splayed, arms flung over her head. Larynx crushed.
There are two things Nina Jacobs is determined to do over the summer of 1986: avoid her mother's depression-fueled rages, and lose her virginity before she starts college in the fall. Both are seemingly impossible—when her mother isn't lying in bed for days, she's lashing out at Nina over any perceived slight. And after a blowjob gone spectacularly wrong, Nina is the talk of Flanagan's, the Upper East Side bar where young Manhattan society congregates. It doesn't help that she's Jewish, an outsider among the blue-eyed blondes who populate this rarified world. She can fit in, kind of, with enough alcohol and prescription drugs stolen from her parents' medicine cabinet.
Flanagan's is where she pines for the handsome, preppy, and charismatic Gardner Reed, whom every girl wants to sleep with and every guy wants to be. After she's introduced to cocaine, Nina plunges headlong into her pursuit of Gardner, oblivious to the warning signs. When a new medication seemingly frees her mother from darkness, and Nina and Gardner grow closer, it seems like Nina might finally get what she wants. But at what cost?
Freud called cocaine "a gorgeous excitement," but a gorgeous excitement for the wrong guy can be lethal.
"Terrific debut ... With the strong young characters and the skin-crawling atmosphere created by creepy men, crimes in the news, porn shops, and overheated adolescent sexuality, the book recalls another excellent true crime–inspired novel, Emma Cline's The Girls. Carefully paced and beautifully written, this edgy coming-of-age novel succeeds on all counts." —Kirkus Review (starred review)
"(L)ush and thrilling...Weiner vividly captures her protagonist's adolescent yearning, which adds to the tension as Nina continues pursuing Gardner despite the red flags. This is worth a look." —Publishers Weekly
"Drawing on her own teen years and the notorious Preppy Killer of a young woman in Central Park, first-time novelist Weiner subjects smart, stymied, funny, and sympathetic Nina to harrowing, surreal, and funny predicaments complicated by class, misogyny, denial, addiction, and jealousy. Throughout, Weiner incisively captures the timbre of the time; the city's beauty, madness, and terror; the stunning recklessness of young women; and the endless complexities of families." —Booklist
"I haven't felt this kind of excitement reading a story set in the '80s since I first discovered Jay McInerney, Tama Janowitz, and Bret Easton Ellis. From the breathtaking prose to the thrilling glimpse of NYC circa 1986, Cynthia Weiner's outstanding debut invites us into the introspective yet colorful and reckless world of 18-year-old Nina Jacobs as she navigates insecurity, obsession, and perilous social dynamics. A vivid snapshot of a bygone era and evocative coming-of-age story, A Gorgeous Excitement lives up to its title." —Margarita Montimore, national bestselling author of Oona Out of Order
"A mesmerizing story—both very much of its time and also timeless—of the young inhabitants of the (mostly) wealthy Upper East Side of NYC in the coked-up 1980s. A gripping, juicy, fascinating glimpse into a rarified world of a realm by now transformed." —Tama Janowitz, author of Slaves of New York and A Certain Age
"A Gorgeous Excitement is the rarest blend of charm and suspense, at once delightful and terrifying, an expertly written non-coming of age that also serves as cautionary tale, as quintessentially haunting as New York City itself. Read it on a bench in Central Park, but only before night falls." —Elisa Albert, author of After Birth and Human Blues
This information about A Gorgeous Excitement was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Cynthia Weiner has had a long career writing and teaching fiction. Her short stories have been published in Ploughshares, The Sun, and Epiphany, and her story, "Boyfriends," was awarded a Pushcart Prize. She is also the assistant director of The Writers Studio in New York City. A Gorgeous Excitement, her first novel, was inspired by her upbringing on New York's Upper East Side in the 1980s, and particularly by the notorious "Preppy Murder" of 1986. Weiner now lives in New York's Hudson Valley.
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