A Gorgeous Excitement: A Novel

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A dazzling novel about one young womans summer of infinite possibility . . .

There are two things Nina Jacobs is determined to do over the summer of 1986: avoid her mothers depression-fueled rages, and lose her virginity before she starts college in the fall. Both are seemingly impossiblewhen her mother isnt lying in bed for days, shes lashing out at Nina over any perceived slight. And after a blowjob gone spectacularly wrong, Nina is the talk of Flanagans, the Upper East Side bar where young Manhattan society congregates. It doesnt help that shes 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.

Flanagans 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 shes 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.

Reviews

Lush and thrilling.Publishers Weekly

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 crimeinspired novel, Emma Clines The Girls. Carefully paced and beautifully written, this edgy coming-of-age novel succeeds on all counts.Kirkus Reivew, starred review

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 citys beauty, madness, and terror; the stunning recklessness of young women; and the endless complexities of families.Booklist

Author Bio

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 Yorks Upper East Side in the 1980s, and particularly by the notorious Preppy Murder of 1986. Weiner now lives in New Yorks Hudson Valley.