A Gorgeous Excitement: A Novel

A dazzling debut novel set in 1980s New York, when cocaine is as easy to get as ice cream, about one young woman’s summer of infinite possibility—and looming danger.

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.

Freud called a cocaine high “a gorgeous excitement” and, as Nina Jacobs is about to learn, New York is a deadly place to be gorgeous.

Set against the backdrop of a menacingly gritty Manhattan of the 1980s, Cynthia Weiner's debut is a timeless and universal story of a young woman trying to find her voice, and of the countless young women whose voices were silenced.

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 bar where Manhattan society’s private school kids gather. It doesn’t help that she’s Jewish, an outsider in a world of blue-eyed blondes who populate New York’s rarified Upper East Side.

But she can fit in at Flanagan’s—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, who every girl wants to sleep with and every guy wants to be. After an introduction to cocaine, Nina plunges headlong into her pursuit of Gardner despite the warning signs. When a new medication seemingly frees her mother from darkness, and Gardner and Nina grow closer, it seems like Nina might finally get what she wants. But at what cost?

Story Locale:New York City

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.

Author Residence: Hudson Valley, NY

Author Hometown: Manhattan, NY