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Jul 08, 2011

Yulia rated it:

Um, don't mind what I wrote in 2006 (below); I ended up loving this book.

Here's a recent article on a line of Duke cancer research that seemed too good to be true:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/health...

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My only guess as to why the New Yorker called Goodman a "writer of uncommon clarity" is because she repeats the same phrases again and again until you have no excuse not to notice them. One reference to the action in this no More...

11 comments like (6 people liked it)

May 28, 2008

le-trombone rated it:

This is a novel of science, labs, and people. Amazingly, it very good. This is not sarcasm; it is not often that one sees a well-written novel where the characters are scientists, and actually behave like human beings. Unfortunately, behaving like human beings sometimes means behaving badly.

Cliff Bannaker is a postdoc struggling with his research. It's not going well, and the two directors of his lab are contemplating letting him go, when his third run of experiments (a virus to More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jul 16, 2011

Lucy rated it:

this book also had a particularly great sentence i thought some of the academic bloggers might enjoy: "patiently, during office hours, he tried to explain his course material, even while privately he wondered if some of his students had been mistakenly admitted to college, because they seemed to him mildly retarded." i liked this book a lot. i've never read a book about medical/molecular biology researchers before, and she captured the whole research experience pretty well (i liked the More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 06, 2008

Steve rated it:

I read somewhere that part of Goodman’s point in writing this was to portray science as religion. Her worshippers were researchers in a lab studying possible cures for cancer. The Way, the Truth, and the Light were the cause and effect relationships in the biological world that could be supported or denied by way of experiments. Some were attracted to this “church” for the chance to proselytize. One of the co-directors of the institute was an accomplished glad-hander and self-promoter. He w More...

5 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 20, 2007

Della rated it:

One of the few books that I didn’t enjoy, and forced myself to read all the way through in order to be fair about my assessment of the entire book. To make a long complaint short, I think Allegra is telling a specific story about a specific set of circumstances. It is an interesting story such that her characters are placed in difficult situations, but they choose to take courses of action that I think a lot of reasonable people in science would have taken an alternative approach. What worrie More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 22, 2010

Marie rated it:

I would give the first half of this book 4 stars, and the last half 2 stars, averaging to 3 stars.

In the beginning, I found the story compelling and the plot interesting. It is not for the fainthearted, though, or for animal lovers. I am no lover of rodents, but even I had difficulties reading about the experiments on the tiny mice that were given cancer and other ailments and then "sacrificed" at the end. (I do believe that animal research is necessary for scientific advan More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 29, 2008

Laura rated it:

Very detailed insight into the world of medical research. I enjoyed this one. Here is the review from the New Yorker: 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, Clif More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 27, 2008

Ross rated it:

Intuition is a mystery of sorts and it's a piece of serious fiction that raises important issues about ethics and scientific research. I choose it because it came highly recommended as serious fiction. I plowed through it because the plot is filled with tension and I wanted to know what happened. I agree with the praise this novel has received for capturing the politics and internal dynamics of an academic research laboratory. The publicity-seeking oncologist represents a type one can find, I su More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 02, 2007

Trish rated it:

I'm going to say only two things about this book:

Wow.

I think I'd like to own a copy.

"Harmonious in their enthusiasms, they abhorred together beautifully as well, detesting religions, superstitions, condominiums, and corporations."

"For years Ann had contemplated the way that weakness became strength. More than once as she ran her busy household, and organized her husband's and her children's lives, she'd wished that she, too could More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

The author of the National Book Award finalist Kaaterskill Falls (1998) and the critically acclaimed Total Immersion (1989) and The Family Markowitz (1996) has written another gripping novel. In this issue-driven drama told through multiple perspectives, Goodman probes the commitment to scientific discovery and the desire for success. Keeping situations morally ambiguous, Goodman introduces characters whose intuitions guide them through all-too-plausible dilemmas. A few critics disagreed about R

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0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 18, 2007

William rated it:

A novel about cancer research in Cambridge, Mass., Intuition follows a close-knit group of postdoctoral researchers through a series of experiments that leads them through successes, failures and the possibilities of private and public redemption. Larger issues are raised about the purity of science, the uses of ego in competitive climates, the overlap between politics and science, and how personal needs occlude and corrupt institutional goals — and often times shape them. What I enjoyed about t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 06, 2008

David rated it:

Intuition reminded me of a John Grisham book, however instead of taking place in a courtroom, the setting was a research lab and academia. The level of detail included made the book very vivid. There were some characters that were not developed and therefore created a little bit of a void. There was also the presence of the "Kate" character, which really did not make sense or add to the plot. Overall this was a good read and the ending was not predictable and made sense, and was cr More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 11, 2009

Megan rated it:

Intuition, by Allegra Goodman deals with a controversy over an experimental cancer treatment developed at a Boston lab. The Philpott lab is struggling to get funding when Cliff, one of the postdocs, appears to have made an amazing discovery. As the story progresses, Cliff's findings are thrown into doubt by his fellow researcher and ex-girlfriend Robin. When she cannot replicate his results, Robin accuses Cliff of manipulating the data. Her initial questioning grows until it becomes a national d More...

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Jan 20, 2012

Susie rated it:

Not a fan of this book at all. In fact I found myself laughing out loud at some of the visual descriptions of what a research lab is like. I felt like the author spent a few hours in the research wing of a university madly writing in a notebook things she saw on the shelves and then later tried to recreate the visual. She focused too much on trivial details. Bottles of red liquid...tubes with orange caps....hardly details to focus on.

Still there were some descriptions that I laugh More...

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Oct 02, 2011

Joan rated it:

Someone suggested that I read this book after we had discussed another novel (The Cookbook Collector) by this author. 'you like it' she said, 'it's about a lab', referring to my scientific education and occupation.

It was a page turner with interesting plot and character, but not completely filling - although I just finished reading the book and will perhaps reflect back on this book in the future - which is ultimately my standard for a good book!

The story centers on a l More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Sep 17, 2011

Suzanne rated it:

Loved this book. yes, it goes a bit wayward part of the way through. But novels that dig deeply into people’s career choices and motivations like this are uncommon. We get to peek inside a world class bioresearch lab and learn of the challenges, the isolation and rewards. Goodman knows her characters so well that it’s a pleasure to see them from several sides. As she tells it, some personalities have zero tolerance for hypocrisy.

The other thing to recommend this novel is the spot More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 08, 2011

Jennifer added it

Wonderful and thought provoking book about research ethics and the day-to-day life in a biomedical lab at a cancer institute. The characters really sprang to life off the page and were complex and multi-dimensional: Robin, the frustrated postdoc who accuses her lab-mate and ex-boyfriend of research misconduct; Cliff, an extremely ambitious and charismatic postdoc who truly believes in his major discovery of a virus that cures cancer in mice and that he did no wrong; Feng, the Chinese postdoc who More...

0 comments like

May 31, 2011

Kate rated it:

Absorbing. I read it in three days, which is saying something with two kids around. She does a great job of making bench research accessible to the layperson and really captures the hopelessness of research and careers that are going nowhere. The world is so particular that it's almost an exotic locale. I liked her way of switching POVs within chapters (might look back at that for my own use), though some POVs were totally gratuitous. I thought, at times, that too much space was devoted to detai More...

0 comments like

Mar 09, 2011

sabisteb rated it:

Cliff ist ein frustrierter, glückloser Postdoc in Boston's Philpott Institute. Das war nicht immer so, Cliff begann seine Karriere in Mairon Mendelssons Labor als Star, als junge Nachwuchshoffnung. Cliff hatte große Ziele. Er wollte ein Virus so modifizieren, dass es Krebszellen abtötet, stattdessen tötet es reihenweise seine Versuchsmäuse. Seine Chefin verlangt, dass er das Projekt einstellt und von nun an seiner einige Jahre älteren Lebenspartnerin Robin bei ihrem (ebenfalls glücklosen) Projek More...

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Nov 29, 2010

Nicole rated it:

I liked this complex novel, especially the way Goodman balanced the thoughts and feelings of so many characters. She has a great ear for dialogue. I have two small criticisms, however. First, Goodman's choice of names bothered me. On page one, we learn that the researcher in charge of a cancer lab is named Mendelssohn. Really? With all the names Goodman could have picked she chose one that immediately brings to mind Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics? A few pages later, a post-doc ment More...

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Oct 14, 2009

Coralie rated it:

I just finished "Intuition" by Allegra Goodman. The book was all about what goes on in research labs. This lab was a cancer research lab. Things at the lab are going badly and everyone is discouraged until Cliff, one of the researchers, thinks he has made a groundbreaking discovery. This sets off a chain of events as the lab directors have to decide what to do with this information. When do they publish the results, how do they handle the resulting publicity? The story explores t More...

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May 11, 2009

Cara rated it:

I read this for a class that integrated the topics of science, technology, and history. We also would discuss ethics and the role of morality in science. Intuition wasn't a very memorable book on its own -- if we hadn't spent weeks discussing it in class, I probably wouldn't have remembered much of it on its own. Its biggest flaw is its characters. They were flat as pita bread (excuse the food simile, I haven't eaten yet today) and most of them lacked true personality traits. Instead pf personal More...

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Apr 22, 2009

Pygmy rated it:

A struggle to read...mainly because at pg.82, I still don't care about any of the characters. The science laboratory setup with actually real science details, rather than pseudo-crap a la "Pemberly By the Sea", was nice and different, but not so appealing that it can stand wihtout character investment.

The author also has a baffling habit of changing POV several times throughout a chapter, essentially hopping to every character in the room. I had always heard/thought that More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 12, 2010

Steve rated it:

There are very few books or films that capture the ups and downs of doing scientific research. Allegra Goodman’s book “Intuition” actually does a pretty good job of capturing the motivations, competition, camaraderie and ethical decisions faced by researchers during their day-to-day jobs.

The book seems to be modeled off of an infamous case of scientific misconduct that occurred during the time I was in graduate school. In the story, an average post-doctoral researcher at a mildly p More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 13, 2010

Oroboros72 rated it:

I work in a lab and have never read a book set in a realistic lab before. The line that I vividly remember because it is so true is (something like:)"Back in the lab, she realized she was the only one who had gotten any sun over the weekend." I really loved the book, but I absolutely hate this cover. It looks like a 'ditsy summer read' and does not in any way represent the weight of meaning and emotion that is within its pages.

The conflict of a very smart and good pers More...

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Feb 02, 2008

Tommy rated it:

Frankly, I was quite disappointed given all the hype about this book when it hit the stands. In the end, there were well-developed characters but I just didn't buy into the relationships, I really didn't care about what happened to any of them, and was skeptical of the zaniness than embodied parts of the ending. It took me in a direction I wasn't expecting, and didn't inspire me to want to be there.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 08, 2011

Katy rated it:

A friend of mine (with completely disparate taste in books) gave me this book for my birthday. While I liked it okay, it took me a LONG time to get throught it. I know I really love a book when I'm willing to sacrifice sleep in order to read it... (I'm not interested in sacrificing sleep for much of anything). When I read The Time Traveler's Wife - when Abby was a newborn - I stayed awake until 4 a.m. several nights running. I could not put it down, despite the fact that I was a zombie with a br More...

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Jan 01, 2008

Sean rated it:

this book started off well, but all the central questions and driving conflicts fizzled into nonessential happenings towards the end.

not to sound antisemitic - but goodman's narrative sounds very jewish. i guess i dont have a problem with that, but it didn't feel like any statement about being jewish was really essential to anything in the book.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 22, 2010

Dee rated it:

This is a tough book to review! Firstly, Allegra Goodman has a depth of perception into her characters that is almost spooky. It's hard to remember that they're made-up! Yet she applies this keen observation so skillfully that her descriptions never feel pedantic or forced. It's a real feat of wisdom and writing craft to pull off such detailed portrayals so elegantly. For that alone, she deserves five stars. The book started beautifully and was completely engaging. The only reason that I gave th More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

beth rated it:

Just thought it was a shallow development of not all that believeable characters. While the main character alluded to the fact that Robin was his girlfriend, there was minimal build up or description of their relationship or their lives. Just could not get into the characters.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

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