num_pages: 192
description: Following the discovery of an anonymous libretto, a composer comes out of retirement to write an opera based on the life of the infamous novelist-turned-photographer Cyril Vane. But those who knew Vane and his Russian-born wife, the silent-screen star Madame Olga Petrovna, are prepared to go to any lengths to suppress the truth about them. Vane's dark secret follows him to the grave, but his jealous and vengeful widow and her faded cronies employ all the means at their disposal to prevent the opening of Blossom's opera, an explosive grand finale to his career. This dazzling new novel by one of America's finest contemporary writers is peopled by the Gothic characters readers of James Purdy have come to appreciate and relish. From Val Sturgis, Kentucky boy made good and now Blossom's protégé, to Francis X. Beauregard, aging star of the silver screen now living surrounded by street-wise hustlers in his Brooklyn mansion, here Purdy is at is most incisive, charting America's twentieth-century decline.
language: English
title: Out With the Stars
titlecomplete: Out With the Stars
genres: Fiction, American
ratings_count: 45
publisher: Peter Owen Publishers