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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.
“Lush and thrilling.”—Publishers Weekly “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. From the breathtaking prose to the thrilling glimpse of NYC circa 1986, Cynthia Weiner’s outstanding debut invites us into the introspective yet colorful and reckless world of 18-year-old Nina Jacobs as she navigates insecurity, obsession, and perilous social dynamics. 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
