Synopses & Reviews
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 Cliffs 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.
Review
"Vivid, incisive, and funny...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." Donna Seaman, Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"[R]ich, intricate....Top-notch in every respect. A superlative novel." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
Review
"No one writes 19th Century novels about 20th and now 21st century America better than Allegra Goodman....[A] delicate analysis of how an ethics scandal filters through the sensibility of brilliant and brilliantly realized characters. (Grade: A)" Entertainment Weekly
Review
"Goodman has laced Intuition with mystery and failed romance, and both are compelling, significant elements of the overall story, but it's the strength and complexity of her characters that really carry the novel." The Oregonian (Portland, OR)
Review
"Self-knowledge and scientific knowledge eddy and swell in this novel in pleasing parallel to each other, making the book not only satisfying as a story of self-discovery but, in a deeper sense, a richly conceived novel about the rewards of work." Los Angeles Times
Review
"[Ms. Goodman's] characters so live and breathe on the page that they could get up and make you a cup of coffee....Her writing is rich, so rich it would be easy to miss how skillful is the prose itself. Exciting...a stunning achievement." The Economist
Review
"Intuition is so character-driven that the plot occasionally sinks beneath the press of its personalities. Yet Goodman's subject...is timely and intriguing....Goodman presides over her universe with a light and sometimes funny touch." Geraldine Brooks, The Washington Post
Review
"Goodman pulls off an almost Victorian dedication to character in this novel, entering the minds of a diverse cast, men and women of all races. The result is a compelling hybrid: a morality tale that is old-fashioned but, in its own resplendent way, remarkably contemporary." Cleveland Plain Dealer
Review
"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
About the Author
Allegra Goodman's work has appeared in the New Yorker, Good Housekeeping, Slate, and the American Scholar. Named by the New Yorker as one of the twenty best writers under forty, she is also the recipient of a Whiting Award and the Salon magazine award for fiction. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Reading Group Guide
Hailed as "a writer of uncommon clarity" by the
New Yorker, National Book Award finalist Allegra Goodman has for years delighted reading groups with her fiction, including such beloved bestsellers as
The Family Markowitz and
Kaaterskill Falls. Set in the high-stakes atmosphere of a prestigious research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
Intuition combines the vivid character portrayals and deeply human situations that have won Goodman high acclaim, and elements of a mystery add to the intrigue of this alluring drama.
Sandy Glass, a charismatic publicity-seeking oncologist, and Marion Mendelssohn, a pure, exacting scientist, are codirectors of a lab dedicated to cancer research but desperately in need of grants. When a key to the cure seems to have been discovered by Cliff Bannaker, their young postdoc protégé, 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. Illuminating the motivations and inner lives of each player in the controversy, Goodman explores the elusive quests that haunt us all.
The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your reading of Allegra Goodman's Intuition. We hope they will enrich your experience of this dazzling novel.
1. The word "intuition" means something different to each reader: it has positive and negative connotations. Is it an apt title? A great title? What role does intuition play in the novel and which characters display it? How?
2. Goodman's novel is set in the mid-1980s, and is rich with details that make it of that time. What did this backdrop add to the story? What might have changed if the action had been contemporary?
3. Are there any parallels between love and science as both play out in Intuition? What do Robin and Cliff discover about the experiment of their relationship as it unravels in Part III of the novel?
4. Near the end of Chapter Eight, Part IV, Goodman writes: "Robin's case against Cliff might as well have been a case against the status quo, an argument against the natural bumps and jolts of the creative process." What do you think of this statement, both as it relates to the action of the novel and as a theme? What is "the status quo" in a creative process? What influence did a place like the Philpott have on this process? Is there a place for creativity in empirical research?
5. Sandy is a charismatic character. Discuss your reaction to him in various modes: as a care provider with his patients; as a parent and spouse; as the public face of the Philpott. Are there conflicts? Is he likeable? Is he moral? What does your intuition tell you about his fate? Discuss his penchant for “useful” careers-what do you see for his children?
6. Sandy and Marion are "de facto" parents at the Philpott. How does their professional relationship mirror their personal lives (or not)?
7. Given the information the novel relates, were the media or ORIS capable of determining the truth about R-7? Why? What did you think?
8. Kate gives Cliff a novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. How and why is this revelatory and appropriate? What does it tell you about Kate as much as it does about Cliff?
9. Goodman's novels, including the National Book Award-nominated Kaaterskill Falls, bring readers into otherwise closed worlds. What makes this work for you? Did you feel the pressure-cooker atmosphere of the research world, and the subsequent "celebrity" of the teams and how it changed their lives? How is this achieved by Ms. Goodman?
10. What does Marion discover she needs? Where will it come from? Who will provide it? Do you feel she's been betrayed? Why or why not?
11. What will the investigation prove? What did Cliff do? What did Robin achieve?
Author Q&A
Your previous novels and short story collections have centered on religious and spiritual issues as well as various aspects of the Jewish experience, yet your latest novel moves away from those themes to explore faith in a scientific sense. Was this shift in focus premeditated or did it happen organically as the story took shape? I had long been interested in writing about scientists and their particular beliefs and doubts. I've also long been interested in writing about community. Like Kaaterskill Falls, Intuition is a novel about faith, ritual and community. Like The Family Markowitz, Intuition is a book about trying to define and express yourself in a family–except that in this new book I am exploring scientific faith, experimental ritual and the community in a laboratory and those professional families that develop in the workplace. Thematically there is common ground between this new novel and my other books. That said, "Intuition" is a departure for me in the sense that I am writing about a new milieu. I made a conscious decision to learn about work and procedures previously unfamiliar to me. I decided that not only did I want to write about researchers, but that I wanted to do research myself–in observing scientists at work in a laboratory. I went into a lab and talked to post docs and took notes and drew pictures. For example, I sketched the animals and their cages. I drew a mouse pinned down on the dissection pad. This process was new for me–and exhilarating.
Because the Philpott Institute is hungry for results, Cliff’s preliminary findings are immediately judged a success by his bosses while his colleague Robin just as quickly regards his results with suspicion. Though snap judgments can be dangerous, isn’t there an equal risk of becoming paralyzed by caution?
Yes indeed. Snap judgments are dangerous and excessive caution is paralytic. A researcher has to know where to push and where to wait. There is a fine line between understanding the significance in data and forcing that significance on data. The characters in this book must define that line for themselves. The choices they make are quite revealing!
In a world of few certainties, do you believe there’s merit to letting our intuition guide us in certain instances?
Intuition is a tricky quality. That inner certainty, that almost instinctive knowledge can be a gift. A seemingly powerful intuition can also be misleading. Again, my characters have to decide how far to trust their intuition.
The protagonist in your previous novel Paradise Park was obsessed by a quest for spiritual truth, while Robin in Intuition is single-mindedly obsessed with seeking scientific and moral truth. Do you believe there are any absolute truths in life or is everything, including science, subject to interpretation and extrapolation?
I believe there is such a thing as truth. Scientists are truth seekers and truth interpreter. There are certainly many ways to describe the world, but I do think there is an objective external reality there to uncover. The truth is not a construct.
As a fiction writer, your work is by definition subjective, yet your husband is a mathematician who dwells in a black and white world of absolutes. Did this contrast between your professional lives provide inspiration for the novel’s theme of moral ambiguity? If not, what inspired you to explore this topic?
My husband is a computer scientist, my sister is an oncologist, her husband is a computational biologist, my mother was a population geneticist, and I have several friends who work in labs. I live with scientists all around me, and so I've developed a natural curiosity about what scientists do and how they think. My work has also been informed by first hand experience of the pressures scientists work with–the constant applications for funding, the jostling for lab space, and the pressure to finish experiments before getting scooped by rivals. Over the years I've also seen the collaborations scientists develop, and as a solitary novelist, I've envied the camaraderie, and intellectual give and take my husband and other friends develop with their colleagues. I've observed the intense joy and sibling rivalry, the fights, the respect, the fun that characterize close collaborations. When I began "Intuition" I knew that this was a great subject for me: the complexity of these work relationships.
What were the particular challenges in learning about the intricate, behind-the-scenes politics and protocols involved in the high stakes world of scientific research, which you portray with such remarkable insight?
Perhaps the greatest challenge to me in writing about scientists was to dramatize their work in a concrete way. I chose to write about biologists doing animal research because I felt that experiments with animals showed the reader scientific process in a concrete, immediate, visceral way.
In addition to exploring the human side of the often nameless and faceless scientific community, did you set out to make a broader statement about the ways in which money and politics can negatively interfere with experimental research?
I'll leave it to the reader to infer broader statements about money, politics and experimentation. As a novelist I specialize in narrow statements–always the particular, and not the general–always the sweeping questions.
The mystery element of the novel is extremely suspenseful, fueled by the shifting narrative perspective that continually casts doubt on what the "truth" really is. What drove your decision to show the story unfolding from four such seemingly unreliable points of view, each colored by their own agenda?
There are many ways to tell a story. I think the contribution I can make is to tell a story from several sides, and beyond that, to tell the story from the INSIDE of several sides. This has always been my artistic interest–a kind of interior geometry. In the case of Intuition I found that my shifting point of view heightens suspense, and also implicates the reader in interesting ways. We identify with first one character and then another; we can see each more fully, and the experience is richer.
Besides being compelling characters in their own right, lab co-directors Sandy Glass and Marion Mendelsohn share a unique bond that’s a fascinating study in contrasts. Were there any real-life role models for their distinctive relationship and do you think it’s a mistake to put too much faith in another person?
Is it dangerous to put too much faith in another person? I suppose there is always a risk there, but without risk there are no rewards of friendship, and intimacy. Sandy and Marion have enriched each other's lives. When it comes to Marion, Intuition asks several related questions as well–What happens over time when we lose faith in ourselves? Where can we find the strength and generosity to keep working with others?
In the past you’ve cited classics such as Middlemarch that inspired you to become a writer. Who are your modern inspirations and did any of them influence aspects of Intuition?
The two contemporary books I've enjoyed most in the past year were Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. But I had already finished writing Intuition when I read these. While writing Intuition I did a lot of rereading, much of it aloud to my oldest son: Dickens' Great Expectations, Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Swfit's Gulliver's Travels. All of these were far darker and more moving than I remembered! Closer to my own subject matter, I reread Sinclair Lewis' Arrowsmith which seemed rushed in places, but also rang true in its propulsive all-consuming manic energy.
Have you began thinking about or writing your next novel and how do you see your future work continuing to evolve in terms of subject matter?
I am indeed thinking about my next book. I keep future plans secret, but I can say that I'll use what I learned in Intuition: to set the bar high, to look out into the world, and to work patiently to tell my story.