Going Too Far: A Conversation with Cynthia Weiner
On mothers and daughters, friendship, mental illness, antisemitism, misogyny, drugs, and the 1986 murder that changed New York City.
Intimate conversations with our greatest heart-centered minds.
Cynthia Weiner and I have been friends for over three decades. We met in New York City just after I’d gotten divorced through Cynthia’s best friend, Emily, who was my new also-recently-divorced pal. We were all writers, and had all lived through some hard stuff. But, dang, did we have fun together — as well as help one another through, well, anything and everything that came up in those days.
Cynthia wrote one of my favorite ever short stories, Aftertaste — I might be able to recite it by heart. Her beautiful work has also appeared in Ploughshares and Epiphany and been awarded a Pushcart. And she’s the assistant director of The Writers Studio in New York City. She’s also such a tremendously kind, brilliant, loving, insightful, playful, and loyal human. It was an extra special treat to interview her.
Her debut novel, A Gorgeous Excitement, is astoundingly good. Kirkus Reviews gave it a starred review. Town and Country included it on their 36 Must Read Books of Winter 2025 list. The story is inspired by Robert Chambers’ murder of Jennifer Levin in Central Park in 1986 (aka the “Preppy Murder”), a murder that deeply impacted Cynthia’s life since she grew up on the Upper East Side and even casually knew Chambers.
Nina Jacobs, a smart, witty, curious, young Jewish woman is hoping to lose her virginity in the summer before leaving for college. She pins her hopes on Upper East Side heartthrob Gardner Reed who does indeed bestow much coveted attention on her. She also makes a new best friend, Stephanie, who helps free up Nina’s rigid view of herself whilst introducing her to New York City’s club life and the sweet rush of cocaine (something Freud called “a gorgeous excitement,”). Throughout it all, Nina struggles to help her mother with her increasingly spiraling mental health.
The writing is crisp and taut, no unnecessary words, yet breathlessly elegant with some of the most beautiful metaphors and vivid descriptions of New York in the unbridled wildness of the eighties I’ve ever read. I’m always bowled over by Cynthia’s gorgeous prose but she’s outdone herself here!
Cynthia lives in the Hudson Valley with her kitties, Clover and Violet.
⭐️ Cynthia is graciously gifting three readers an autographed copy of A Gorgeous Excitement! If you’d like to be one of the recipients, please add “GORGEOUS” after your comment. The winners will be chosen at random on Monday, January 27th and notified by Substack Direct Chat. Shipping is limited to the United States. ⭐️
This story holds so much, but at its heart there are three main journeys. The first is friendship. The way friendships can shift and change and endure and thrive. I know you have many long-term friendships in your life. Can you talk about what friendship means to you and why you centered it in this book?
I've always loved stories about friendships between girls. Girls who meet at that time when they fall in love with each other, particularly when you're fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and probably a little older too. I wanted Nina to have a friend who was not in her usual circle of friends, somebody from outside who saw her in a different light; when you're in high school with the same people for years and years, no one's in that new discovery of friendship. But when you make a new friend at that age, it's thrilling.
Friendships can be like a romance. Nina and Stephanie’s definitely has that love affair quality to it.