A Gorgeous Excitement
A Novel
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- 9,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Weiner debuts with a lush and thrilling study of preppy teenagers in 1986 New York City, inspired by the real-life slaying of an 18-year-old woman who was found dead in Central Park. The crime takes place in August and has little to do with the plot, which is devoted to another 18-year-old in the months leading up to the killing. It's June, and Nina Jacobs is desperate to lose her virginity before leaving at the end of the summer for Vanderbilt. She hopes to accomplish this with Gardner, the handsome bad boy she frequently runs into at Flanagan's, a dive bar on the Upper East Side. One day, she meets Stephanie, a girl her age, in Central Park, and Stephanie turns her on to cocaine. She offers some to Gardner, who was caught the previous winter breaking into Tavern on the Green, and they start sneaking off to the park together to snort it. Before the summer ends, a young woman is found dead in the park, and though it would be a spoiler to reveal the identities of the victim and suspect, the case makes Nina reevaluate her priorities and relationships. Weiner vividly captures her protagonist's adolescent yearning, which adds to the tension as Nina continues pursuing Gardner despite the red flags. This is worth a look.
