Rachel Pastan

"A contemporary retelling of Daphne du Maurier's gripping and iconic novel Rebecca, ALENA tells the story of a bright young curator who finds herself haunted by the legacy of her predecessor at a small, cutting-edge art museum on Cape Cod"--

Alena

A Novel

In the Field

In an inspired restaging of Daphne du Maurier’s classic Rebecca, a young curator finds herself haunted by the legacy of her predecessor. Two years have passed since the tragic death of Alena, curator at the Nauk, a cutting-edge art museum on Cape Cod. At the Venice Biennale, Bernard Augustin, the Nauk’s wealthy, enigmatic founder—to whom Alena had been closest confidante and muse—offers the position to an aspiring young curator from the Midwest. It’s the job of her dreams, and she dives at the chance. Just as quickly, she finds herself well out of her depth. The Nauk echoes with phantoms of the past—a past obsessively preserved by the museum’s staff—and the newcomer’s every move mires her more deeply in artistic, erotic, and emotional entanglements. When recently discovered evidence calls into question the circumstances of Alena’s death, shattering secrets surface, putting to the test the loyalty, integrity, and courage of our heroine—who remains nameless, like the heroine of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, the inspiration for this provocative and spellbinding tale.

In 1920 an aspiring geneticist escapes into her studies as she grapples with her sexuality, but the world of science comes with its own troubles. In 1920, having persuaded her resistant mother to send her to college, Kate Croft falls in love with science. Painfully rebuffed by a girl she longs for, and in flight from her own confusing sexuality, Kate finds refuge in the calm rationality of biology: its vision of a deeply interconnected world, and the promise that the new field of genetics can explain the way people are. But science, too, turns out to be marred by human weakness. Despite her hard work and extraordinary gifts, Kate struggles, facing discrimination, competition, and scientific theft. At the same time, a love affair is threatened by Kate’s obsession with figuring out the meaning of the puzzling changes she sees in her experiments. In the Field explores what it takes to triumph in the ruthless world of mid-twentieth-century genetics, following Kate as she decides what she is—and is not—willing to sacrifice to succeed. “[A] faithful, patient reimagining of Daphne du Maurier’s novel . . . The writing at times is so fine you wish this weren’t a retold story. . . . Alena is . . . a brilliant take-down of the self-serious art world, rendering it helplessly camp by sprinkling some of its august and/or provocative names . . . over this . . . pop-culture totem.” —The New York Times Book Review “Luminous and sure-footed . . . The triumph of Pastan’s story is that it manages to be more than a companion piece to du Maurier’s. Alena proves itself an intriguing and substantial novel on its own merits, while still offering the kind of gothic plunge we remember and crave from our younger years.” —The Washington Post “Like a good reproduction, Alena preserves important trademarks of the original art—creepy and claustrophobic.” —Entertainment Weekly

Rachel Pastan

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