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.
Intuition
Narrated by Kathe Mazur
Allegra GoodmanUnabridged — 13 hours, 46 minutes
Intuition
Narrated by Kathe Mazur
Allegra GoodmanUnabridged — 13 hours, 46 minutes
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Overview
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.
Editorial Reviews
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.
— The Washington Post
Goodman has written an energetic indictment of high-stakes science, presenting it as a system that makes unreasonable demands on young researchers, promotes cupidity, doesn't tolerate dissent. In the end, though, this argument fails to move either Cliff or Robin, who come to realize that despite its failings they'd rather do "the slow exhausting work" of science than anything else. The reader, meanwhile, understands that despite being cast out of the Mendelssohn-Glass lab—one for being too exacting, the other for not being exacting enough—neither Cliff nor Robin will have a problem getting hired somewhere else. Cancer hasn't been cured, but there'll still be a pretty happy ending for each of them.
—The New York Times
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. Simultaneous release with the Dial Press hardcover (Reviews, Dec. 5, 2005). (Feb.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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 Bront 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 2005 Reed Business Information.
A scandal rocks a cancer-research laboratory, unsettles relationships and stimulates an impassioned inquiry into the issue of scientific freedom in Goodman's rich, intricate third novel (Paradise Park, 2001, etc.). The year 1985 may be an annus mirabilis for the Harvard-affiliated Philpott Institute in Cambridge, Mass. Brilliant "postdoc[toral fellow]" Cliff Bannaker has developed a virus (R-7) that effectively destroys cancerous tumors in "nude" (i.e., hairless) mice. Despite caution preached by sternly rational lab director Marion Mendelssohn, Philpott's co-director Sandy Glass, a practicing oncologist and an ebullient pragmatist who thrives in the limelight, prevails, and Cliff's "breakthrough" is made public-perhaps prematurely. Cliff's former girlfriend (of sorts) and lab colleague Robin Decker finds increasing cause to suspect he has selectively suppressed data, and blows the whistle. Cliff becomes, first, an accused traitor to the scientific spirit, then a martyr; Robin a pariah, shunned by other colleagues (several of whom are quite incisively characterized); Marion and Sandy, eternal opposites, locked in a struggle neither can win, or wants. There's something of the breadth and generosity of a Victorian "three-decker" novel in the skill with which Goodman threads her ingenious plot through an ambitious mobilization of terse confrontations and detail-crammed scenes (climaxing with a dramatic Congressional investigation and the formal appeal determined to reverse its findings), and the remarkably varied gallery of supporting players. They include Marion's quietly supportive husband Jacob, a complex mixture of self-sacrifice and guile; Cliff's Chinese-born research partner XiangFeng, who may pay the highest price for Cliff's alleged duplicity; and Sandy's three accomplished daughters, notably, bookish, idealistic, hopelessly infatuated adolescent Kate. Yet these are only the crest of a wave of empathy (worthy of George Eliot) that finds not only the human weaknesses, but the goodness, and even nobility, in each of Goodman's struggling characters-most of all in Robin, who'll never know whether she has been inspired and ennobled, or betrayed, by her "intuition."Top-notch in every respect. A superlative novel.
"Goodman's characters and story are luxuriously imagined.... [She] meticulously charts the insidiousness of doubt, showing how it metastasizes." — Newsday
"Superb.... a delicate analysis of how an ethics scandal filters through the sensibility of brilliant and brilliantly realized characters. It's a tricky operation that Goodman performs with a precision of a scientist, and the flair of an artist at the top of her game. A." — Entertainment Weekly
"This is a story of love and science both gone wrong, and Goodman handles the narrative and its wide web of details with efficiency and grace, bringing a novelist's eye to bear on a realm too often ignored."— O Magazine
"Powerful.... [An] 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.... A truly humanist novel from the supposedly antiseptic halls of science."— Publishers Weekly
"This brilliant novel shows a world of labs and researchers which seems unfamiliar to some of us, yet it's a world intimately relevant to our existence—our fallibility and vulnerability. Page by page the story shimmers with insights into the subtlety and complexity of human psychology and relationships. Allegra Goodman writes like a master." —Ha-Jin, National Book Award winning author of WAITING and WAR TRASH
"What a feat, to pull off a large story of science and politics in the here and now, with beautifully drawn and compelling characters, with all the large and small details of their lives. What a gift not to pass judgement on any of them, to love each character equally and fairly. The ending is perfection." — Jane Hamilton, author of THE MAP OF THE WORLD and THE BOOK OF RUTH
“Goodman’s interests—if not always her sympathies—lie with her all-too-human albeit brilliant creations....her portrayals of these scientists, in and out of their lab coats, are of the richest texture. These characters are only as beset by vanity, selfishness, egotism as the rest of us. But in the fiercely competitive, high-stakes world of cancer research, it’s enough for careers–and lives–to be destroyed.” — Vogue
“The best major American novel of the year so far” — The New York Sun
“Winningly original...In smartly unfolding scenes of scientific intrigue, political maneuvering, romance, and complex alliances, these memorably drawn characters play out their personal and professional dreams and deceptions. Goodman transports us in a fugue state of first-class storytelling from the bare-bones basement of the Philpott to the gleaming halls of Congress and back, bring[ing] us that much closer to the heart of the matter: what it means to be–merely, magnificently–human.” — Elle
"Believe it or not, a thriller and a page-turner about scientific fraud. Brilliant." — The Guardian
“There’s something of the breadth and generosity of a Victorian “three-decker” novel in the skill with which Goodman threads her ingenious plot through an ambitious mobilization of terse confrontations and detail-crammed scenes...Top-notch in every respect. A superlative novel.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
The small Mendelssohn-Glass Research Lab is dedicated to cancer research. When Cliff Bannaker’s experiment begins to look promising, Sandy Glass rushes publication and a grant proposal. The other post-docs are expected to put their own work aside to support the new project, a situation that engenders resentment. But Robin Decker has suspicions about the merit of Cliff’s methodology and results, and opens the lab to public scrutiny. Kathe Mazur’s narration is interesting. Her unemotional performance befits the objectivity one expects the scientific process to embody. The unique voices she creates communicate each character’s humanity as human foibles and emotions invade the sterile lab. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940172163241 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
| Publication date: | 02/28/2006 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
Intuition
By Allegra Goodman
Random House
Allegra GoodmanAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0739325248
Chapter One
1
All day the snow had been falling. Snow muffled every store and church; drifts erased streets and sidewalks. The punks at the new Harvard Square T stop had tramped off, bright as winter cardinals with their purple tufted hair and orange Mohawks. The sober Vietnam vet on Mass Ave had retreated to Au Bon Pain for coffee. Harvard Yard was quiet with snow. The undergraduates camping there for Harvard's divestment from South Africa had packed up their cardboard boxes, tents, and sleeping bags and begun building snow people. Cambridge schools were closed, but the Philpott Institute was open as usual. In the Mendelssohn-Glass lab, four postdocs and a couple of lab techs were working.
Two to a bench, like cooks crammed into a restaurant kitchen, the postdocs were extracting DNA in solution, examining cells, washing cells with chemicals, bursting cells open, changing cells forever by inserting new genetic material. They were operating sinks with foot pedals, measuring and moving solutions milliliter by milliliter with pipettes, their exacting eyedroppers. They were preparing liquids, ices, gels.
There was scarcely an inch of counter space. Lab benches were covered with ruled notebooks and plastic trays, some blue, some green, some red, each holding dozens of test tubes. Glass beakers stood above on shelves, each beaker filledwith red medium for growing cells. The glass beakers were foil topped, like milk bottles sealed for home delivery. Peeling walls and undercounter incubators were covered with postcards, yellowing Doonesbury cartoons, photographs from a long-ago lab picnic at Walden Pond. The laminar flow hood was shared, as was the good microscope. In 1985, the Philpott was famous, but it was full of old instruments. Dials and needle indicators looked like stereo components from the early sixties. The centrifuge, designed for spinning down cells in solution, was clunky as an ancient washing machine. There wasn't enough money to buy new equipment. There was scarcely enough to pay the postdocs.
On ordinary days, the researchers darted into and out of the lab to the common areas on the floor. The cold room, warm room, and stockroom were shared with the other third-floor labs, as was the small conference room with its cheap chrome and wood-grain furniture, good for meetings and naps. But this Friday no one left the lab, not even the lab techs, Aidan and Natalya. Gofers and factotums for the postdocs, these two belonged to a scientific service class, but no one dared treat them like servants. They were strong-willed and politically aware, attuned to every power struggle. They kept darting looks at each other, as if to say "It's time to go downstairs," but they delayed going to the animal facility for fear of missing something. The lab directors, Marion Mendelssohn and Sandy Glass, were meeting in the office down the hall. They had been conferring for half an hour, and this did not bode well. One of the postdocs was in trouble.
How bad was it? No one spoke. Prithwish kept his head down over a tray of plastic tubes, eyes almost level with the avocado plant he'd grown from seed. "My most successful experiment," he often said ruefully. Robin ducked out to look up and down the hall, then brushed past Feng as she hurried back inside. The black and white clock on the wall was ticking past three, but like the clocks in grade school, this one was always slow. Natalya glared at Aidan, as if to say "I went downstairs last time; it's really your turn now," but Aidan turned airily away. It might have been funny, but no one joked at the techs' pantomime.
"Cliff." Suddenly, Marion Mendelssohn was standing in the doorway. She stood there, fearsome, implacable, dark eyes glowering. "Could we have a word with you?" Cliff smiled tightly and shrugged, a desperate little show of nonchalance.
The others looked everywhere else, as their lab director led Cliff away to the office she shared with Sandy Glass.
Cliff's cheeks were already burning as he followed Marion down the corridor. At six foot three, he was more than a foot taller than Marion. Still, he was entirely in her power, and he dreaded what she and Glass were about to say. For years he'd been developing a variant of Respiratory Syncytial Virus and had dreamed of using his modified RSV to transform cancer cells into normal cells. His experiments were not working; Sandy and Marion had ordered him to give them up, and he had disobeyed.
The door closed behind him, and Cliff was standing in the tight, cluttered office.
"Now, Cliff," said Glass, "did we or did we not have a discussion about your continuing trials with RSV?"
Cliff stood silent.
"Maybe you don't remember our conversation," said Glass, smiling.
Cliff did remember, and he knew better than to smile back. Always cheerful, brimming with the irrepressible joy of his own intelligence, Sandy Glass smiled most when he was angry.
"I said you had to stop using RSV," Sandy reminded Cliff. "You said you understood."
Cliff nodded.
"We established RSV has some effect in vitro," Glass said. "Congratulations. You're on your way to curing cancer in a petri dish. But what have we established when we try injecting RSV into living mice?"
Cliff looked away.
"You've established nothing. You injected fifty-six mice with RSV, with no effect on tumors whatsoever. Therefore, Marion and I asked you to stop. We asked you nicely to move on. What did you do next?"
"I tried again," Cliff said, staring down at the floor.
"Yes, you did. You tried again."
"I'm sorry."
Sandy ignored this. "We told you to stop wasting resources on RSV."
"I didn't want to give up," Cliff said.
"Look, I realize RSV was your baby," Sandy said. "I realize this was two years' work developing the virus."
Two and a half years, Cliff amended silently.
"We understand you put your heart and soul into this project." Sandy glanced at Marion, who looked anything but understanding. "The point is, RSV does not work. And now, yet another set of experiments-against all advice, against our specific instructions. What were you thinking, Cliff? Don't say anything. Perseverance can be a valuable trait, particularly when you're right. But we see now that this third trial is showing every sign of failing spectacularly. No, don't apologize. Just tell us what you were thinking. Tell us your thoughts, because we really want to know."
Why had he tried twice more with the virus after it had failed? They were expecting an answer, but Cliff could not speak. The truth shamed him; it was so simple: he could not bear to jettison work that had taken so much time. The hours, the thousands of hours he'd spent, sickened him. How could he confess to that? The scientific method was precise and calibrated. A scientist was, by definition, impassive. He cut his losses and moved on to something else; he was exhausted, perhaps, but never defiant with exhaustion. A scientist did not allow emotion to govern his experiments.
And yet Cliff had been emotional and unrealistic about his work. He had behaved unprofessionally, taking his long shot again, and yet again. How could he explain that? There was only one reasonable explanation: he was not a scientist. This was what Mendelssohn and Glass were driving at.
"Did we or did we not agree," said Glass, "that you would end the wholesale extermination of our lab animals?"
"We don't have the money," said Mendelssohn, and she didn't mean funds for the mice themselves, which cost about fifteen dollars each, but the money for the infinite care the delicate animals required. "You'll recall we asked you to work with Robin."
"She could still use another pair of hands," Glass said, and Cliff hated him for that, and for the patronizing, slightly prurient tone in Glass's voice.
"I deserve my own project," Cliff said, raising his eyes.
"There is no such thing as your own project in this lab," Mendelssohn declared.
"Look, this is a team," Glass said, "and you need to pull your weight, not drag everyone else down with your personal flights of fancy."
Down the hall, in the lab, the others gathered like near relations at a funeral.
"They wouldn't fire him," Prithwish said loyally. He was Cliff's roommate, after all.
"They will not fire him," Feng agreed.
Natalya thought about this. "My feeling is Mendelssohn would not, but Glass would." She was Russian and had been a doctor herself, before coming to America. Natalya had never taken to Glass.
"They'll be arguing, then," said Prithwish.
"They'll let him stay," Aidan predicted, "and make him so miserable he'll leave by himself."
"He was miserable before," Prithwish pointed out, but the others hushed him. Cliff was coming back down the corridor.
Instantly his friends scattered, vanishing into the clutter of glassware and instruments like rabbits in the brush. All but Robin, who pulled at Cliff's sleeve. Silently they slipped into the adjoining stockroom, the lab's poisonous pharmacological pantry.
She closed the door behind her. "Are you all right?"
His cheeks were flushed, his eyes unusually bright. "I'm fine."
She drew closer, but he turned away.
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know," he said. "They've already tried to pawn me off on you."
"They suggested that you work with me?"
"Six months ago, but I said no."
She was surprised, and hurt. "You never told me that."
"What was the point? I didn't want to work on your stuff."
She folded her arms. "What's wrong with my stuff?"
"Nothing!" he lied.
She had spent five years working on what had once been considered a dazzling project, an analysis of frozen samples of blood, collected over the years from cancer patients who had died of various forms of the disease. Sandy Glass had been convinced that somewhere in these samples was a common marker, a significant tag that would suddenly reveal a unifying syndrome underlying his patients' tragic and diverse conditions. Glass had presented the project to Robin in her first year with a flourish, as if he were bestowing upon her a great gift. He'd told Robin he was convinced there was a Nobel Prize in this work; that this above all was the research he himself had hoped to do if his clinical duties had allowed. Then, having bestowed his blood collection along with a great deal of disorganized documentation about each donor's illness and death, he'd left her to work alone.
He'd chosen her for her fierce intelligence, her passion for discovery, her ambition-and, of course, Glass had always liked a beautiful postdoc. Robin's eyes were a warm brown, brilliant under pale lashes, her blond hair silken, although she tied it back unceremoniously with any old rubber band she happened to find. Her features were delicate and easily flushed, her teeth were small and almost, but not quite, straight. On the upper right side, one tooth overlapped another slightly, like a page turned down in a book. With her fine eyes and shining hair, she'd always seemed to Cliff like a girl out of a fairy tale. Still, even she could not spin Glass's dross into gold.
"So there's nothing wrong with my work, but it's not good enough for you," she challenged Cliff.
"No, I didn't say that."
"That's what you were thinking."
"Look, if I ever thought that, I'm sorry. Just, please . . ."
Gravely, she turned on him. "But you aren't sorry."
"Stop!"
"I just thought . . ." she began.
"Don't think anything. Just leave me alone."
He strode back through the lab and out into the hall. How could Robin expect him to talk to her? What did she want from him? To beg her to let him work on her dismal black hole of a project? To break down sobbing on her shoulder so she could comfort him? He still heard the humorous disdain in Glass's voice. He saw the hard disappointment in Mendelssohn's eyes. They had not ordered him to leave; they'd even allowed that he might stay, but they had made him suffer. They had held up the evidence of his disobedience and failure, then tossed whatever scrap of a scientist he'd been upon the garbage heap and all but called out "Next!" There was Prithwish coming after him down the corridor. Cliff was not going to suffer his condolences. He escaped into the stairwell and bolted down the stairs.
Outside the institute, the snow had stopped. The December sun was setting, and the world was strangely still. He'd run down four flights of stairs, and stood for a moment, breathing hard. Then he caught his breath and his anger flared again. He kicked his way through the snow, mouthing retorts. Who do you think you are? Who do you think I am?
He walked without noticing distance or direction. Startled, he saw a red neon sign, LIBBY'S IQUORS, and realized he was in Central Square. A bus swept past, but there were scarcely any cars on the road. Stores were closed, and clean snow blew over the empty taxi stands. All alone, Cliff walked on.
He walked over a mile, as far as MIT, and then turned around and started back again past shuttered Victorian factories converted into warehouses, redbrick ramparts lowering in the shadows of taller office buildings. He thought about calling his parents, but what could they say to him? They owned a stationery store in West Los Angeles. They'd always encouraged Cliff. He'd attended University High School, gone to science camp in summers, practiced triangulation on sunbaked tennis courts, built his own weather station, cooked homemade versions of Silly Putty, toothpaste, and glue. His parents had paid for chemistry sets, and student microscopes, and even Stanford. They were well educated; both had gone to college, but Cliff was the first person in his family to earn a PhD. His parents knew nothing about bench work or lab politics. He thought of his thesis advisor, now dead. What would Professor Oppenheimer have said? He'd have laughed, of course, showing off his yellow teeth. He'd say, "What do you expect? You don't listen to the lab director, you get busted. You screw around with someone in the lab; of course you're gonna end up fighting later. You get what you deserve. How many times do I have to tell you? Don't shit where you eat."
His hands were cold, even in his pockets. He walked and walked up Mass Ave, and then along the Charles River, and his heart began to calm.
Continues...
Excerpted from Intuition by Allegra Goodman Excerpted by permission.
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