allegra goodman's intuition
this novel is a fair departure from goodman's earlier works (which, if i recall correctly--and i probably don't--focus on jews in the catskills, wacky families, etc). its major characters are the scientists and postdocs working in a cancer research facility in boston in the mid-80s (and, personal history note: as someone who at the tender age of 14-15 worked in such a lab, she has the culture down pretty well--not that any of the bigwigs or postdocs had much time for a high school freshman trying desperately not to butcher fruit-fly larvae). when one failing postdoc suddenly gets amazing, cancer-curing results, a colleague becomes suspicious of his claims. drama ensues! anyway, i liked this book a lot, and goodman's characters are all very well-written, even the more minor ones. i was especially fond of the three daughters of one of the lab-running bigwigs.
3 comments:
Just read this the other day, thanks to the nerdy (in a good way) folks at LabLit. I haven't read anything else by her, but I thought this was pretty well done overall. Some of the lab stuff was a little didactic, but at least it was accurate.
ooh, that lablit site is fun! thanks for the link. :)
what parts did you think were didactic?
I've already returned the book to the Undergrad, so unfortunately I can't quote specific passages. I think part of it was the novelty of an author getting the details right - I've read so much bad science-in-fiction that it took me by surprise. I guess 'didactic' is the wrong word, because she didn't do the typical expository lump thing of 'and then Robin ran a gel to sequence the gene. As you know, Bob, gel electrophoresis is a method by which an electric current is passed through a solution of agarose gel in order to separate nucleotides...' blah blah blah. She did what I think is the right thing to do, and assumed that some readers would understand the technical details, and some wouldn't (and wouldn't care), and so it just became part of the ambiance of the lab and the natural actions of the characters. This, unfortunately, is so atypical that it stood out to me.
Now I'm reading Andrea Barrett's Servants of the Map, which also unobtrusively uses science and nature for texture.
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