PEARLY WHITES!

A startup prepares to launch revolutionary tooth implants as chaos reigns at the company and an FDA trial looms in Goldstein’s novel.

Chauncey Orbaugh III is called Trace, a nickname that stuck “due to a misspelling of the Spanish number three he had made on a junior high test that he never lived down.” His investment firm funds TeeGentics, a raucous startup that claims it will revolutionize the dental market with low-cost genetically engineered tooth implants. The company promises that their test tube-grown teeth will be perfect and white and help countless millions around the world—for a fee of $99.99 per tooth. TeeGentics’s product is the brainchild of Dr. Werner Brandt and is partially funded by a foundation overseen by Liz Cleaver, heir to a cannabis company. All is not well at TeeGentics: The teeth have immense potential, but they’re untested, and an FDA trial is upcoming. New head of research Bob Oppenheimer is tackling the problem of tooth death, since the implants are actually dying after a week. He recommends a DNA fertilizer to supercharge the teeth, but when lab assistant Billy becomes a test subject, the side effects are troubling—his libido explodes and he gets a permanent erection, followed by impotence. When FDA agents arrive at TeeGentics and start asking questions, Trace can barely keep his sanity—let alone the company—intact, with everything seemingly on the verge of collapse. Goldstein’s riotous novel about a wacky biotech startup runs the gamut from plausible to outlandish, with all the action happening at a frenetic pace. It’s a fun idea, and the characters feel authentic in their stressed-out roles. In the midst of the chaos, though, some scenes don’t go anywhere, and the hazy language used in descriptions can make the story hard to follow. The third act is easier to swallow and becomes enjoyable to read, but the path there has some obstacles as well.

A wild, comic tale about a zany startup and its discontents that struggles with clarity.