Product Description

Hailed as “a writer of uncommon clarity” by the New Yorker, National Book Award finalist Allegra Goodman has dazzled readers with her acclaimed works of fiction, including such beloved bestsellers as The Family Markowitz and Kaaterskill Falls. Now she returns with a bracing new novel, at once an intricate mystery and a rich human drama set in the high-stakes atmosphere of a prestigious research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Sandy Glass, a charismatic publicity-seeking oncologist, and Marion Mendelssohn, a pure, exacting scientist, are codirectors of a lab at the Philpott Institute dedicated to cancer research and desperately in need of a grant. Both mentors and supervisors of their young postdoctoral protégés, Glass and Mendelssohn demand dedication and obedience in a competitive environment where funding is scarce and results elusive. So when the experiments of Cliff Bannaker, a young postdoc in a rut, begin to work, the entire lab becomes giddy with newfound expectations. But Cliff’s rigorous colleague–and girlfriend–Robin Decker suspects the unthinkable: that his findings are fraudulent. As Robin makes her private doubts public and Cliff maintains his innocence, a life-changing controversy engulfs the lab and everyone in it.

With extraordinary insight, Allegra Goodman brilliantly explores the intricate mixture of workplace intrigue, scientific ardor, and the moral consequences of a rush to judgment. She has written an unforgettable novel.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5751 in eBooks
• Published on: 2006-02-28
• Released on: 2006-02-28
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

From Publishers Weekly
There are more rats than those in the cages of the Massachusetts research laboratory at the center of Goodman's novel. Postdoctoral researcher Cliff may have fudged his amazing tumor-reducing results while his bosses are all too eager to capitalize on any discovery. Jenna Stern delivers a lively depiction of the high-pressure world of cancer research. Her narrative commences on a fairly even note and increases in intensity as Nobel Prize fantasies are dashed by congressional hearings and political realities. Stern does a particularly deft job with the heated interchange between Sandy Glass, a lab director, and an irate congressional panel. Stern does less well with Cliff, Robin and the other postdoctoral students at the heart of the story. They all sound remarkably alike, and Stern's voice is too mature for the 20-somethings. The weighted, even intonation is not the way Generation Y speaks—even the highly educated Ivy Leaguers on whom this novel is based. The abridgment is smoothly orchestrated with no noticeable jumps or gaps. Despite these relatively minor flaws, Intuition is an enjoyable light listen about a timely issue.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker
This intimate portrait of life in a research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, revolves around a scientific mystery: the groundbreaking, too-good-to-be-true discovery of a virus that fights cancer. Cliff, the rakish, headstrong post-doc responsible for the discovery, is on the verge of dismissal when his tumor-ridden mice exhibit stunning rates of remission; meanwhile, Cliff's co-worker and former girlfriend, spurred by personal and professional jealousy, begins to harbor suspicions about his lab work. The somewhat transparent plot is made compelling by the aesthetic delicacy of Goodman's writing—furless lab mice are "like quivering pink agar"—and by the care with which she sketches the social world of the lab. The omniscient narrative nimbly shifts perspective among a small number of complex characters, to produce a Rashomon-like inquiry into truth and motive.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
I once spent shabbat with an Orthodox family in Jerusalem's Kiryat Mattersdorf, a neighborhood where, on Friday evenings, a siren marks the beginning of a 24-hour pause in every human act of creation. Against that looming deadline, my unflappable hostess prepared dinner for 19 -- a tough order in any situation, but even more so when the cook is abiding by the rules of kashrut. Everyone knows that pork isn't kosher, but until that Friday I wasn't aware that "things that swarm" also are off the menu. To make sure that no tiny swarming insect found its way into the meal, she peeled apart and inspected every layer of two dozen onions. Allegra Goodman's new novel, Intuition, revived that memory. Not because Goodman is a famous Jewish-American writer, whose National Book Award finalist Kaaterskill Falls probed deep into a closed world much like Kiryat Mattersdorf. Not because Goodman herself is Orthodox. (She has described herself as "a fairly observant Jew, but a very observant writer.") What brought the memory back to me was the patient handling of the onions, their careful dissection, the attentive scrutiny of layer after layer until the very center had been reached and nothing more could be done. This is the way Goodman handles her characters in Intuition. Every character here -- even the relatively minor ones, even the relatives of minor ones -- is endowed by their creator with the fullest complements of flaws, tics, vices, strengths, virtues and moments of nobility. Just when we think we know her self-promoting, hard-charging oncologist Sandy Glass, just when we are smirking contemptuously at him, Goodman peels back another layer and invites us to peer harder. We find ourselves looking at a loyal chevalier whose capacity for devotion to a colleague wipes the smirk off our face. It works in reverse with another character, Jacob, husband to Glass's exacting scientific partner, Marion Mendelssohn. Jacob has put his own brilliance at the service of his wife's career and seems the model of modest self-sacrifice. Yet he's gradually revealed as a secret manipulator who, with a few careful words, will set in motion the events that threaten his wife's reputation and the existence of her research lab. But it is not a simple matter of "people are not what they seem." Goodman doesn't stop. Sandy Glass has many more layers, and so does Jacob Mendelssohn. So does everybody. To be honest, it's tiring. But it's also ultimately rewarding. Intuition comes at what seems to be a very good time for character-driven fiction. The last year has yielded Nicole Krauss's moving A History of Love, Zadie Smith's exuberant On Beauty, Ian McEwan's textured Saturday. Like Intuition, all of these books seem linked by a generous willingness to describe and explore human affections -- filial, spousal, collegial -- with a kind of modern sensibility that manages to sidestep any hint of the sentimental. Intuition is so character-driven that the plot occasionally sinks beneath the press of its personalities. Yet Goodman's subject, scientific fraud, is timely and intriguing. Marion Mendelssohn and Sandy Glass are co-directors of a cancer research lab in Cambridge, Mass. When one of their young post-docs, Cliff, appears to make a breakthrough, Glass pressures Mendelssohn into rushing the results to print. But Cliff's colleague and sometime girlfriend Robin begins to suspect something is wrong. Her search for answers sometimes seems irrational and perverted, prompted by jealousy; at other times, she appears to be the only brave and scrupulous one in the lab. And before she knows it, her simple demand for the right to question has turned into a witch hunt, all under the baying of a grandstanding congressman. Goodman builds quite a bit of tension here: Is Cliff the innocent victim of unscrupulous publicity seekers, is he guilty of sloppy scientific method, or is he a deliberate fraud? The details of what really happened, when finally revealed, are so sketchy that it seems as if Goodman is intent on preserving a measure of ambiguity for him. But as the novel progresses, it becomes clear that her real mission is bigger and riskier. Goodman has formed these people and sent them out into her imaginary world to act. Now she looks on -- sometimes in pleasure, sometimes in sorrow, always with mercy -- as their free will pushes them into and out of the light. In Kaaterskill Falls, the old-world skeptic, Andras, believes that "if there is a God, he scatters his creation and lets lives fall where they may." Andras could be describing Goodman. Lest this sound too earnest, Goodman presides over her universe with a light and sometimes funny touch. Sandy Glass can't stand his daughter's boyfriend: "He would not listen to a single word about Charlotte's athletic, ambitious college swain. Jeff from Dunster House. Jeff from the Crimson. Jeff the squash player. Jeff Yudelstein. That ridiculous name! Not just an ordinary Jewish name, but an overstuffed knish of an appellation. Yudelstein was halfway between a yodel and strudel." Goodman, who lives in Cambridge, near Yudelstein's Harvard, is intimately familiar with both the physical setting (ashy winter snowbanks, shoe-destroying spring slush) and the scientific milieu of Intuition. Her mother was a geneticist, her sister is an oncologist, her husband is a theoretical computer scientist. There are wonderful details about the subculture of the lab: the way a graduate student might have to wait her turn to file a dissertation because the team is concentrating on "pushing another student out the door"; the embarrassment a post-doc feels sporting a tan after a day off, when pallor is the proud flag of the dedicated researcher. Goodman knows how the closed community of the lab, with its rules and rituals, its ascetic demands, its devotion to a higher purpose, parallels the closed religious communities that she has written about so successfully in the past. Six hundred and thirteen mitzvot (commandments), a dozen inviolable lab protocols -- both worlds are bound all around with rules, the breaking of which leads inexorably to sin, or something like it, and brings down upon the transgressor the status of outcast. In the end, though, Goodman's scientists come to realize that it is in the uncalibrated realm of human relationships that greatness may be germinated or crushed. Just as their cell lines will only grow in the right medium, the lab's young post-docs also need a specific medium in which to flourish. Goodman's scientists, at last, come to affirm the tentative proposition advanced by vinegary old Philip Larkin: "Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love."

Geraldine Brooks, the author of "March" and "Year of Wonders," is currently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University.

Reviewed by Geraldine Brooks
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

When Did This Take Place?
I read this book in one day when I was sick in bed in Europe and couldn't get anything else in English. I'm not sure I would have finished it otherwise.
I was aware of Allegra Goodman's reputation, but was disappointed in the writing and character development. Not bad, but no Jane Austen.
For some reason Ms. Goodman chose to avoid all references to pop culture. As a result, there was no way to tell when the story took place. Obviously not in the present---------WHERE ARE THE CELL PHONES?

Fun, quirky novel
I really enjoyed this novel. I connected with the characters, was pulled around (in a good way) by the plot. A perfect beach read -- not complicated, but enjoyable.

original and truthful novel about the world of science
I liked the idea behind "Intuition", because it was the first novel I have ever encountered, which was so close to my own life and profession. Allegra Goodman managed to find the underappreciated niche and filled it with a remarkable book. The world of academic life sciences is rendered with precision in "Intuition"; it is obvious that the author took her time to really get into the work in the lab in a prestigious institute.

Marion Mendelssohn and Sandy Glass are two co-principal investigators of the lab where several dedicated postdocs and technicians work like crazy to get the groundbreaking results. The novel starts when one of the postdocs, Cliff, is reprimanded for pursuing the experiments with R-7 virus strain, which do not seem to work. Cliff is ordered to work with another postdoc, Robin (who is also his girlfriend), on her project (which also does not work although she has been trying for five years). Behind his back, Sandy and Marion discuss letting Cliff go.

Everything changes when suddenly Cliff's experiments start working and his model mice, which are injected with cancer cells and have developed tumors, after being treated with the virus, go into remission. Everyone is happy and excited, everyone has to help Cliff finish the experiments, Cliff becomes the star of the lab, gives interviews, his results are published in Nature... But Robin suspects that something might be wrong and decides to conduct her own small investigation...
I liked very much the characters in this novel - there are probably all the personality types one can see in the world of science, from the child prodigy, through the meticulous worker, the ironic pessimist, the pursuer of success, to the fame-devouring narcissist. They are from different countries and social backgrounds, which also reflects the real situation.

All the feelings the scientist might feel during the work - frustration, jealousy, tiredness, but also relief, pride and happiness after achieving the goal are also there. The work and living conditions of all levels of scientists are perfectly depicted. The non-so-scientific side of doing science is also introduced: the National Institutes of Health bureaucracy, grant writing, media attention, and, most importantly, scientific integrity, which is the main issue in this novel. There are only two things I am wondering about: how universal this story is, how many people will read it with interest equal to mine, how important the questions discussed really are to the general public; and how soon it will get obsolete - the progress in life sciences is enormously fast so in a few years this book may read like a fossilized record of past endeavors. Anyway, fortunately now postdocs earn more than seventeen thousand dollars a year...

There was enough suspense to keep the reader engrossed, and Goodman made sure that there is enough background to get even to the people who have no clue about science. The ending is very realistic though - I do not want to include a spoiler, but I just have to say that it is very much like life and not much like a novel, which I think is a good thing, but not everyone would probably agree with me.