When Stars Blow Out

A bejewelled dandy of a novel.*When Stars Blow Out spins a brisk fable of fame in our time. Chloe Pitt, the imperious editor-in-chief of the sizzling glossy Pilgrims Progress, has a grim job for her new star reporter Austin Baer. Off he jets to the Riviera to profile another writer: the aged Gregory McClintock, half a century ago the devoted observer of actors, dancers, musicians, and artists who now live in legend. With his forgotten essays about to appear as a book, the reclusive old-timer stands to break out as something of a legend in his own right. Baer arrives with plenty of attitude, and McClintock receives him with justifiable suspicion. Their fencing soon escalates into an all-out clash of cultures, lit up with unexpected flashes of mutual illumination as the past starts bleeding magically into the present.

Matthew Gurewitsch, for several years the performing-arts editor of Connoisseur, writes on the arts and travel for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other leading publications on three continents. When Stars Go Out is his first novel.