A Gorgeous Excitement

A Novel

By: Cynthia Weiner

Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman

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)

“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

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Oprah Daily, Kirkus Reviews, CrimeReads

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.

Incredible in every way.

Read this book. The characters are human and likable, the story is brilliant. My only criticism is that the author’s note at the beginning gave too much away. Still, brilliant book.

Juicy, but wise, but touching too

Such an easy read, like a summer book, but at the same time a thoughtful account of a girl growing up with a mentally ill mother, and being ambitious and smart, and finding valuable comfort, and needed fortitude, in drugs.....also some hilarious insights into the do's and don't of upper east side prep school girls, "Dont ever wear pearls whiter than your teeth."
SOOO good.

Not what I expected, but that's more than okay

While it was not at all what I expected, it is an excellent, solid, well told story with a lot of emotional depth.
I could not stop listening as the plot offered up surprising twists along with a poignant tale of a teenage girl trying to navigate serious family issues and still find joy in life.
I think the author did a fantastic job of staying inside her main character's teenage mindset. I was able to hark back to the emotions and tunnel vision of those early crushes, the abject desperation to get someone to "like" you back, the ability to bend what was actually going on to fit your heart's narrative.

Good Read!

I liked the story it was different than so many story plots out now. The narrator was not my favorite to listen to at times.

Felt it needed more editing and maturity

It’s too bad cause I was excited to read a fiction story of that era in Manhattan. I found the narrator’s voice to be annoying and that distracted me from enjoying the book. It was all the same tone no dramatization.