Just a quick follow up on my last post, in regard to Allegra Goodman’s new novel Intuition. The Economist has given it a rave review, calling it a “stunning achievement”. The New York Sun calls it “The best major American novel of the year so far”. And here’s Jerome Groopman, reviewing it in Slate:

Each of Goodman’s characters could be cartoonish, except that such individuals in fact do heavily populate the Boston-Cambridge biomedical axis. She so deftly captures them—their talents, incentives, foibles, and language—that I found myself linking the fictional names to real-life faculty and fellows at local universities and hospitals. This authenticity is the greatest strength of Intuition. Rarely has a novel so deeply probed the thoughts and actions of physicians and scientists as they strive to succeed.

Dr. Groopman has an open invitation to share his speculations with Free Association.