Intuition

Starred review from December 5, 2005
In another quiet but powerful novel from Goodman (Kaaterskill Falls
), a struggling cancer lab at Boston's Philpott Institute becomes the stage for its researchers' personalities and passions, and for the slippery definitions of freedom and responsibility in grant-driven American science. When the once-discredited R-7 virus, the project of playboy postdoc Cliff, seems to reduce cancerous tumors in mice, lab director Sandy Glass insists on publishing the preliminary results immediately, against the advice of his more cautious codirector, Marion Mendelssohn. The research team sees a glorious future ahead, but Robin, Cliff's resentful ex-girlfriend and co-researcher, suspects that the findings are too good to be true and attempts to prove Cliff's results are in error. The resulting inquiry spins out of control. With subtle but uncanny effectiveness, Goodman illuminates the inner lives of each character, depicting events from one point of view until another section suddenly throws that perspective into doubt. The result is an episodically paced but extremely engaging novel that reflects the stops and starts of the scientific process, as well as its dependence on the complicated individuals who do the work. In the meantime, she draws tender but unflinching portraits of the characters' personal lives for a truly humanist novel from the supposedly antiseptic halls of science.

January 15, 2006
Readers yearning for enjoyable novels of academic manners can add another to the especially fine crop published recently. While National Book Award finalist Goodman's latest doesn't quite match the dazzle of Zadie Smith's "On Beauty" or the zany, brainy satire of Alison Lurie's "Truth and Consequences" and Jennifer Vandever's "The Brontë Project", her book does stand out for its biting yet insightful portrayal of a high-stakes research institute. Like the religious camp that Goodman brought to life in "Kaaterskill Falls", the prestigious Philpott Institute in Cambridge, MA, is a virtually closed community dominated by a charismatic leader, oncologist Sandy Glass. Dr. Glass's enthusiasm galvanizes his ambitious scientists to work round the clock when experimental results yield a possible cancer cure, until one young researcher publicizes her suspicions of fraud. As scandal descends, supple and subtle prose reveals each character's complexities without judgment. That same controlled language keeps the plot moving as ethics, politics, and emotions collide, eventually revealing how true integrity -and otherwise -is distributed within this microcosm of the human experience. Recommended for most fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 11/1/05.]" -Starr E. Smith, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from December 15, 2005
The fluency of her insights and the sheer pleasure of her aerodynamic prose propelled Goodman, the author of " Paradise Park "(2001), onto the best-seller lists. Her fifth book, about an outbreak of hubristic ambition in a small research laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, promises to win her even more avid readers. Marion Mendelssohn, the director of the Philpott Institute, is a brilliant and meticulous scientist happy to work with her opposite, the brash oncologist Sandy Glass, an extrovert who enjoys the battle for funding that high-stakes research demands. But after one of the lab's young scientists, Cliff, makes a radical breakthrough in cancer treatment, Sandy takes over, launching an accelerated PR campaign and bypassing all the methodology and patience essential to sound science. As Sandy courts the media, Marion lowers her guard, and Cliff becomes maniacal and elusive, Robin, a fellow researcher and Cliff's former girlfriend, grows suspicious about Cliff's discovery and breaks ranks. Goodman's sympathetic yet floundering characters are compelling, their conflicts provocative, and her writing spellbinding as she dramatizes the consequences of ignorance, the poison of doubt, and the quandary of intuition. Vivid, incisive, and funny whether she's describing the handling of lab mice or a congressional hearing, Goodman not only tells a psychologically dazzling and covertly archetypal story but also conducts a timely inquiry into our society's problematic matrix of science, money, and politics.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)