I feel like I've been on a tremendous roll of good novels lately, and this one is marvelous.
The setting is a cancer research lab in Boston, where none of the current experiments have produced much, and the most recent round of grant funding is about to run out; lab directors Sandy Glass and Marion Mendelssohn are beginning to worry that they may have to shut down.
Suddenly, though, hope arrives as one of their young scientists suddenly reports exciting results; it's a surprise, as Cliff had been working for months on this line of research with nothing to show for it, and as Sandy and Marion begin pulling people off other projects to assist Cliff, there is a certain amount of resentment in the lab.
Among the most resentful is Robin, who has research of her own she'd rather be working on, and doesn't appreciate being assigned to Cliff's project; the fact that Robin and Cliff are a couple only complicates matters.
Everyone's motives are complex and subject to second-guessing in Intuition, and Goodman refuses to make any of her characters simple heroes or villains. These are complicated, real people, and even the minor players have more depth than many novelists' protagonists. There are no easy answers at the end, and we're left with a great deal of room to make our own judgments about what's really happened.
Very fine.
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