A Gorgeous Excitement

Signed copies of Cynthia Weiner's debut novel inspired by "The Preppy Murder" of 1986 in New York's Central Park.

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. The novel has been featured in The New Yorker, Town & Country, Oprah Daily, and People Magazine, among others.

From The New Yorker Best Books We Read This Year:

“The title of this assured début novel is taken from Freud’s description of cocaine’s effects. That drug, combined with prescription medications, sex, and alcohol, fuels the narrative, which is closely modelled on the real-life death of a Manhattan teen-ager in 1986—the so-called Preppy Murder case. The summer before the protagonist, Nina, leaves the Upper East Side for Vanderbilt, she is searching for someone to “please God take her virginity.” She soon meets Gardner, a devious and charming troublemaker who fills her with a “buzzy euphoria.” Nina follows him on a series of dangerous outings that lead her to grow disenchanted and wary. “Everything’s too big to get my head around,” she says, as she begins to reckon with the compromises of adulthood.”