controlled experiment; With "Intuition", Allegra Goodman brings us a different kind of family saga.(Book review)

Byline: Jean Nathan

Unlike the clans in The Family Markowitz or Kaaterskill Falls, the characters in Allegra Goodman's latest novel, Intuition (Dial Press), are related not by blood but by a sort of blood thirst-for the cure to cancer.

The year is 1985; the place is Boston. Dr. Sandy Glass, a practicing oncologist as smooth and sharp as his name suggests, rules the Philpott Institute's cancer-research lab with an "alchemy of authority, charm, and chutzpah," while his more pessimistic partner, Marion Mendelssohn, a dedicated scientist, clings to caution despite her intense ambition. Sandy and Marion's young postdoctoral proteges are supersmart, highly trained, overworked, underpaid, and increasingly resigned to the unlikelihood of a miracle.

All this changes when one of the postdocs, the dashing Cliff Bannaker, discovers that R-7, the virus with which he has been injecting the lab's cancerous mice, shows signs of reversing the progress of their tumorous growths. Before long, visions of prestigious publications, hefty grant allocations, even Nobel Prizes are dancing in their heads. That is, until Robin Decker, Cliff's envious co-worker-and ex-girlfriend-gets it into her head that Cliff's research methods may not be what they should; ...