QUESTIONS

1. How are the denizens of the lab like a family? Is it a supportive family or a dysfunctional one?

2. What motivates the scientists to go on with their experiments year after year, even after failures and lack of results?

3. Is Sandy being manipulative with his patient's family on pages 35-37, or is he sincerely trying to give them hope?

4. Is it always clear who is manipulating whom in the story?

5. Why is Robin so upset by Cliff's behavior after his success with R-7? Is she jealous of his project's success, or are there other reasons?

6. The tedium of laboratory work is realistically depicted. How does Goldman create suspense in her story despite its subject?

7. What details does the author give about the characters that make them real and complex?

8. Conflicts of values are introduced early on. How do they eventually play out in the course of the story? Which conflicts are satisfactorily resolved?

9. What is the significance of references to writers and thinkers from past centuries (Donne, Thoreau, Hooke)? What is the author telling us by these references?

10. Notice the images of battle and war that occur throughout the book. Why does the author use them? What battles is she talking about?

11. Can scientific research be pure and perfect? Why not?

12. Does intuition have a role in the scientific process?

13. What does Sandy ultimately learn from the challenge to the lab? Marion? Cliff? Robin?