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.

Disappointed

Growing up in NYC at this same time as the storyline I was drawn to this. However , I found the narrator so annoying that it was hard to listen to. So with that said- I’m not sure it is a fair assessment whether it was not a good book or jaunt narrator was. Annoying. Skipped though some chapter and thought the last two chapters were better than the rest of the 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.

The way the bend in the characters took me by surprise

This was a very interesting take on what might have been happening to the cohort of HS/college kids at the moment in time when the Dorian’s Red Hand murder was committed. It also explores mental illness, growing up, life milestones, being seen and being known

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.