A Gorgeous Excitement - by Cynthia Weiner (Hardcover)

About the Book

"The summer of 1986 in New York City starts off with a model's face getting slashed after rejecting her landlord's advances. It ends with a young woman's half naked body discovered in Central Park, murdered after a night of "rough sex." Nina Jacobs is 18, working a series of boring temp jobs, trying to lose her virginity before she leaves for college at the end of the summer, while also trying to stay out of the way of her mother, who spends her days in bed or criticizing Nina, or often both. And developing a burgeoning cocaine habit. Could the magnetic IT boy from the bar they hang out at that caters to the Upper East Side private school rich kid set, be the one who can help her achieve both her goals this summer?"--

Book Synopsis

In this "absorbing, astute novel" (Town & Country, Must Read Books of Winter 2025) one young woman's summer of infinite possibility takes a turn she never saw coming.

"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.

Review Quotes

"Lush and thrilling."--Publishers Weekly

"On the Upper East Side in the 1980s, Nina Jacobs is desperate to fit in. Throughout this absorbing, astute novel, she endures painful parenting, scurrilous gossip, and regular old teenage indignity--but when she starts getting close to a handsome, preppy regular at the local dive bar, things begin to look up. Or do they?"--Town & Country

"Terrific debut . . . 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 Reviews, starred review

"Drawing on her own teen years and the notorious Preppy Killer of a young woman in Central Park . . . 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 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

"A coming-of-age story with a ripped-from-the-headlines plot, A Gorgeous Excitement plunges us into 1980s New York City in all its seedy glory. Cynthia Weiner's novel is a pitch-perfect evocation of a bygone era. I read this brilliant debut with my heart in my throat."--Daisy Alpert Florin, author of My Last Innocent Year

"A Gorgeous Excitement is at turns both gorgeous and exciting. 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. But the real star of the book for me is the finely drawn world of pre-Giuliani New York, seedy Times Square and all, whose rampant misogyny and racism still feel brutally relevant."--Holly Brickley, author of the forthcoming Deep Cuts

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.