Intuition
By Allegra Goodman
Dial, 344 pages, $25
Allegra Goodman is a beguiling storyteller and incisive observer fascinated by the unexpected permutations quests for truth can take and by the volatile nature of tightly knit, rule-bound and, to outsiders, esoteric communities. She portrayed an Orthodox Jewish enclave in “Kaaterskill Falls,” for example, and in her fifth novel, “Intuition,” she dramatizes life in a small research laboratory in Cambridge, Mass., around 1985.
The lab is directed by Marion Mendelssohn, an intense, somewhat pensive and exacting scientist, a purist and an introvert, who has found her opposite to assist her in the quixotic mission of independent cancer research–the zestful, extravagantly self-confident and gleefully mettlesome oncologist Sandy Glass. Their modest lab is in persistent need of financial backing, and he is a consummate fundraiser. For all their differences, the co-directors are extraordinarily close, and their bond poses a challenge to their spouses and staff.
A buoyant and lucid writer, Goodman revels in telling metaphors and significant detail, but her most compelling strength is her ability to decode the complicated chemistry of relationships professional and personal. Marion’s husband, Jacob, is also a brilliant scientist, but he recognizes that he lacks the imagination required for the greatness he detects in Marion, and seems content teaching and supporting her pursuit of groundbreaking discoveries. But Goodman, a nimble omniscient narrator, makes it clear there is nothing complacent about Jacob. Clever, canny and covert, he emerges as a catalyst for the crisis that nearly turns Marion’s dream of solving the riddle of cancer into a nightmare.
Sandy is married to Ann, an English professor who has named each of their three daughters–Louisa, Charlotte and Kate–after a great female writer. Ann’s ardor for the novels of George Eliot, and young Kate’s fascination with John Donne, serve as indicators of the depth and resonance of the moral quandaries Goodman intends to orchestrate. It is risky for a novelist to align herself with such pillars of world literature because it raises the question of whether the novel in hand will stand the test of time? Not likely, but in the here and now, “Intuition” is a captivating and rewarding read.
Goodman’s scientists, who can’t help but fantasize about immortality, spend far more time scrutinizing mice than reading enduring literature, and rarely have lab mice been so respectfully portrayed, or the medical researcher’s dilemma of having to kill in order to, hopefully, save lives, been so delicately broached. Goodman is versed in the culture of science–her mother was a scientist, her husband is one, and her sister is an oncologist–and consequently she convincingly describes the painstaking work Marion and Sandy’s staff performs patiently day after day, as well as the tangle of competition and loyalty, humor and wariness that shapes their working relationships.
Robin has been at the lab the longest and is profoundly frustrated with her dead-ended work and unsatisfying love affair with Cliff, a Californian eight years younger. He, too, appears to be getting nowhere with his own investigation until a colleague named Feng, a Chinese national concerned about his immigration status and much valued for his understated wit and reliability, observes what may be a breakthrough. Accordingly, Marion decrees that Cliff’s work must take precedence over all other projects, thus precipitating a tempest of jealousy, reckless ambition, secrecy and haste, all anathema to science.
Marion fully intends to proceed with all due caution, patience and thoroughness, but Sandy sees an opportunity for fame and fortune and insists on making their tentative findings public in as big and splashy a manner as possible, not only publishing in Nature but also garnering coverage in People.
Science is all about control, but despite its rigors of procedure, documentation, analysis, peer review and validation, it can easily be derailed by emotion.
As media attention breeds distraction, stress and resentment, Robin’s anger at Cliff’s sudden ascendancy grows exponentially until she cannot keep silent any longer about her growing suspicion regarding the veracity of his methodology or claims. So intense is the scrutiny the lab comes under once Robin presents her case to the National Institutes of Health, the scientists become as trapped and vulnerable as the mice they inject with cancer cells and viruses.
A novel is a sort of laboratory in which the writer subjects her characters to various pressures and predicaments, then records their often-desperate reactions; as in science, easy assumptions must also be distrusted in literature. Like a good scientist, Goodman works microscopically and on the big-picture level, delving ever more deeply into her characters’ psyches and sharpening her rendering of society at large. As the inquiry into Cliff’s work leads to a deftly satirized showdown before a hostile congressional committee, Goodman subtly parses the plexus of science, academics, politics, money and power that engenders and endangers experimental research.
It is a testament to Goodman’s acumen that after she wrote this suspenseful and thought-provoking novel, stories of nefarious scientific exploits have repeatedly been in the news, from suppressed and altered reports on the safety of pharmaceuticals and the truth about global warming to the South Korean cloning debacle.
But for all its relevance to the issues of the day, “Intuition” is at heart an archetypal tale of hubris and desire, love and revenge, ambition and sacrifice, hard work and dumb luck. Goodman’s tale of the repercussions of sloppy science and disastrous competition induces readers to contemplate the power of tenacity, questionable motives, the common currency of disappointment and matters of conscience.
As the novel’s title promises, Goodman does explore our muddled feelings about intuition, which we distrust and rely on.
But this tale of science and the hunger for renown might also be called “Ambiguity,” because that is the state of mind that ultimately dominates Goodman’s arch and involving novel, a feeling contrary to science’s goals yet essential to art since ambiguity is endemic in our demanding, confusing, precarious and precious lives.
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Donna Seaman is an associate editor for Booklist and host of the radio program “Open Books” on WLUW 88.7 FM. Her author interviews are collected in “Writers on the Air: Conversations about Books.”
