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I picked this up because it was recommended in the Lablit panel at Eastercon. It's fiction about science, not science fiction. Goodman recreates life in a research laboratory, from the directors, through the postdocs, the lab assistants, even down to the mice.

[Marion] had worked with many strains of mice in her time and knew their particular traits. She knew the sleek albinos, their fine white hair ant timid manner, their ruby eyes like the tiny birthstones in children's jewelry. She knew a particular strain of black mice, always agitated, jumping and flipping over constantly, like dark socks in a Laundromat dryer. Those animals knocked food pellets from their wire holders. Their fur was spiked and greasy with their rations, their manner mischievous. They looked like little punks. She knew a grey strain that fought, and others that wouldn't breed. She knew the strains that habitually ate their own pups - although all the mice ate their young to some extent. She had seen mice rip each other to pieces, and watched, as well, as three or four slept together, breathing delicately, in one soft mossy heap. These and others lived at the Philpott: some thin, some fat, some drug addicted, some healthy, some sick by design. She knew them all well, but these days she worked with mice the colour of pink rubber erasers; they lacked a thymus gland, and because of this condition they were hairless. They were called nude.

I was completely gobsmacked by the quality of the writing. The careful selection of each word, the precision of the imagery, the rhythm of the sentences, the clarity of the prose. Each character is precisely delineated, their characteristics, their faults, their family relationships, their agendas.

The plot is simple. The Philpott is an independent research lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, overshadowed by its larger neighbour, Harvard. Funding is tight. The directors, Marion Mendelssohn and the charismatic Sandy Glass, are worried about about their survival. Suddenly, one of their postdoc researchers, Cliff, starts getting some positive results from a trial that they had written off. Fame and funding start to pour in. But Cliff's girlfriend and colleague, Robin, thinks it's too good to be true. Cliff's results aren't replicable, and soon the lab is involved in an enquiry.

I'm not a scientist, but this was a book that gave me an insight into the scientific process, and in particular, the idea that it is based on constant failure. It must be disheartening to be constantly disproving hypotheses. At the start of the book Cliff is downcast. I just want to keep on quoting bits because they're so good.

'We established RSV has some effect in vitro,' Glass said. 'Congratulations. You're on your way to curing cancer in a petri dish. But what have we established when we try injecting RSV into living mice?'

Cliff looked away.

'You've established nothing. You injected fifty-six mice with RSV, with no effect on tumours whatsoever. Therefore Marion and I asked you to stop. We asked you nicely to move on. What did you do next?'

'I tried again,' Cliff said, staring down at the floor.

Having read the book, I was astonished that I hadn't heard more about it. I suppose it is American, and hasn't been widely publicised in this country. Nevertheless it was longlisted for the Orange prize in 2009, and (according to the cover) had rave reviews in the Guardian, the FT and the Observer. Maybe I've just missed it because it isn't science fiction. And yet in many ways it's about the things that I love in science fiction - the science, the process of research, and the effects it has on real people. The politics, the in-fighting. The betrayals. In a way everybody betrays someone in this book. Except perhaps for Marion - she's true to herself and to science. But that means that she doesn't get the rewards and the recognition that she deserves. She keeps having to start over, painfully, from the ground up.

I thought this was a terrific book - definitely one of the best that I've read so far this year. Highly recommended.