A Gorgeous Excitement

A Novel

De: Cynthia Weiner

Duración: 12 h

Resumen del Editor

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 over 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?

©2025 Cynthia Weiner (P)2025 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“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