"Intuition" is set in 1985 at the Mendelssohn-Glass cancer research lab at the fictional Philpott Institute in Cambridge, Mass., an institution in constant danger of annexation by Harvard. The scientists who run the lab are a study in opposites. Sandy Glass (ne Sam Glazeroff) possesses "an irresistible liveliness that seemed to override cynicism and doubt, a self-confidence occasionally unbearable, but in many cases deeply reassuring." Marion Mendelssohn, by contrast, has a more stern outlook; the postdoctoral students in her charge fear her displeasure and behind her back call her "Madame Defarge for her grim, most ungrannylike way of knitting" during their presentations. Everyone in the lab feels excitement when one of the researchers, Cliff Bannaker, finds that despite numerous failed trials in the past, a modified virus he injects into cancerous mice seems to cause full remission. Although Marion has misgivings about rushing to publish before the lab has reproduced Cliff's results, Sandy decides that they should hurry to make the results public before a better-endowed institution scoops the discovery.

Yet for all the seriousness of Goodman's intent, she has a fine sense of humor and a wonderfully comic rhythm to her prose. When Sandy startles himself out of a reverie while at the symphony one night with his wife, he finds himself "back in Boston, on a slushy Thursday night. He sat with Ann in a sea of business suits and jersey dresses, ties, turtlenecks, Fair Isle sweaters. This was Symphony Hall in spring: a scent of damp wool and perfume, a glint of old diamonds, a sweep of stoles, the shimmer of silk scarves and squelch of waterproof boots." No one who's ever loved or hated (or more to the point: lived in) Boston could mistake this for the symphony in any other town, or help smiling at that wicked little "squelch." The postdocs in the Mendelssohn-Glass lab groan that they'll inherit a "tech from the second floor -- a woman highly competent, but kooky as well, whining, droning, mirthless, braless." In the hands of a less generous writer, such observations could easily devolve into snipes, but [ALLEGRA GOODMAN]'s bonhomie tempers the sharpness of her eye and tongue.