Good Company: A Novel

Flora and Julian, Margot and David. The two couples have spent most of their lives together, a happy group of actors or theater-appreciators who have all ended up in Los Angeles. They believe they know everything about one another, but one day Flora finds Julian’s wedding ring–a ring Julian had claimed, long ago, to have lost. As Flora realizes that her marriage is fractured, she must also acknowledge that Margot, her best friend, may have had secrets of her own. Meanwhile, Margot is facing the end of her long-running TV role; and Flora’s daughter Ruby is taking her first steps out of the nest. The future is different from how these friends have envisioned it, and whether they’ll emerge from their struggles better than before is, for each of them, uncertain.

Told in alternating points of view, Good Company explores personal transformations as often self-directed as unwillingly imposed. The backdrop of the New York and Los Angeles theater worlds–scrappy indie theater on one side, glossy, vapid Hollywood TV on the other–emphasizes the roles the friends play in their own lives and one another’s. Each has tried their best to live up to expectations, and each must shrug off old skins that no longer fit–even if that means leaving one another behind. A perfect summer read.