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Description
One young woman’s summer of infinite possibility takes a turn she never saw coming in “this 1980s coming-of-age tale [that’s] chillingly compelling. Get ready to be transported.”—People (Best Books of the Month)
AN OPRAH DAILY BEST NEW THRILLER • A TOWN & COUNTRY AND CRIMEREADS MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK
“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.”—Margarita Montimore, bestselling author of Oona Out of Order
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. Every girl wants to sleep with him and every guy wants to be him. 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.
AN OPRAH DAILY BEST NEW THRILLER • A TOWN & COUNTRY AND CRIMEREADS MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK
“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.”—Margarita Montimore, bestselling author of Oona Out of Order
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. Every girl wants to sleep with him and every guy wants to be him. 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.
Product Details
| Publisher | Crown |
| Publish Date | January 21, 2025 |
| Pages | 368 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9780593798843 |
| Dimensions | 9.5 X 6.3 X 1.2 inches | 1.2 pounds |
About the Author
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.
Reviews
“The title of this assured début novel is taken from Freud’s description of cocaine’s effects. That drug, combined with prescription medications, sex, and alcohol, fuels the narrative, which is closely modelled on the real-life death of a Manhattan teen-ager in 1986—the so-called Preppy Murder case.”—The New Yorker
“Dazzling.”—Oprah Daily
“A Gorgeous Excitement is a thrilling coming-of-age narrative set in 1980s Manhattan, featuring twists of humor, vulnerability and, of course, excitement . . . brimming with beautiful prose and suspense.” —Shelf Awareness
“Informed by the author’s real-life acquaintance with ‘Preppy Killer’ Robert Chambers, this 1980s coming-of-age tale is chillingly compelling.”—People
“Lush and thrilling.”—Publishers Weekly
“Cynthia Weiner condemns the callous attitudes and conspicuous consumption of an entire strata of society ready to believe the worst of an outsider while refusing to see the truth of one of their own.” —Crime Reads
“I love this novel, from its gripping first sentence to its chilling last, and the relentless drumbeat of menace in between, capturing all of the things that were thrilling and wonderful and scary and horrible about growing up in New York City in the mid-’80s, which are all the same things that teenagers go through everywhere, in every era, just more of it.”—Chris Pavone, author of The Doorman
“Throughout this absorbing, astute novel, she endures painful parenting, scurrilous gossip, and regular old teenage indignity.”—Town & Country
“Carefully paced and beautifully written, this edgy coming-of-age novel succeeds on all counts.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“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
“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
“Delightful and terrifying, an expertly written non-coming of age that also serves as cautionary tale, as quintessentially haunting as New York City itself.”—Elisa Albert, author of After Birth and Human Blues
“I read this brilliant debut with my heart in my throat.”—Daisy Alpert Florin, author of My Last Innocent Year
“Cynthia Weiner offers a delicious response to Bright Lights, Big City, capturing vividly what it was like for a young woman in the louchely glamourous, cocaine-fueled, privileged white Manhattan of the 1980s.”—Susan Jane Gilman, New York Times bestselling author of Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress and The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street
“A Gorgeous Excitement is a propulsive read filled with vivid characters and a uniquely hilarious, if impossibly sad, mother-daughter dynamic.”—Holly Brickley, author of Deep Cuts
“Dazzling.”—Oprah Daily
“A Gorgeous Excitement is a thrilling coming-of-age narrative set in 1980s Manhattan, featuring twists of humor, vulnerability and, of course, excitement . . . brimming with beautiful prose and suspense.” —Shelf Awareness
“Informed by the author’s real-life acquaintance with ‘Preppy Killer’ Robert Chambers, this 1980s coming-of-age tale is chillingly compelling.”—People
“Lush and thrilling.”—Publishers Weekly
“Cynthia Weiner condemns the callous attitudes and conspicuous consumption of an entire strata of society ready to believe the worst of an outsider while refusing to see the truth of one of their own.” —Crime Reads
“I love this novel, from its gripping first sentence to its chilling last, and the relentless drumbeat of menace in between, capturing all of the things that were thrilling and wonderful and scary and horrible about growing up in New York City in the mid-’80s, which are all the same things that teenagers go through everywhere, in every era, just more of it.”—Chris Pavone, author of The Doorman
“Throughout this absorbing, astute novel, she endures painful parenting, scurrilous gossip, and regular old teenage indignity.”—Town & Country
“Carefully paced and beautifully written, this edgy coming-of-age novel succeeds on all counts.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“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
“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
“Delightful and terrifying, an expertly written non-coming of age that also serves as cautionary tale, as quintessentially haunting as New York City itself.”—Elisa Albert, author of After Birth and Human Blues
“I read this brilliant debut with my heart in my throat.”—Daisy Alpert Florin, author of My Last Innocent Year
“Cynthia Weiner offers a delicious response to Bright Lights, Big City, capturing vividly what it was like for a young woman in the louchely glamourous, cocaine-fueled, privileged white Manhattan of the 1980s.”—Susan Jane Gilman, New York Times bestselling author of Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress and The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street
“A Gorgeous Excitement is a propulsive read filled with vivid characters and a uniquely hilarious, if impossibly sad, mother-daughter dynamic.”—Holly Brickley, author of Deep Cuts
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