Intuition

by Allegra Goodman. How annoying is Allegra Goodman? She's in her mid-thirties, with three (or four?) children, a PhD from Stanford and a job at Harvard, along with three (or four?) best-selling, critically lauded novels. Never mind--this is a fantastic book (I'm half way through). It follows the personal entanglements and fevered politicking that ensue when a small research lab gets remarkable results in a cancer study. One appealing thing about the novel is its probing look at the complications that come along with prodigious gifts (a subject on which Goodman surely speaks with authority). The novel is funny and smart and empathetic and totally convincing.