The nest, Sweeney’s well-received debut novel (published in her early fifties), centered around siblings whose father left them a minor inheritance to be shared when the youngest turned forty. However, astute management and a roaring stock market grew that sum to much more than their father had intended and led to a series of conflicts as the time they were to inherit this unexpected windfall approached. Like her earlier book, Good company is a story of tangled family relations, both the family you are related to by blood and marriage and your chosen family. Margot, a beautiful and gifted stage actress, unexpectedly finds real fame in a long-running TV series filmed in Hollywood. Her former roommate and friend, Flora, who has not been as fortunate but has a reasonable career in voice-over work, is married to another actor, Julian, who is enjoying some success in TV work out west too. He remains connected to “real” theater through a summer production put on annually in rural New York with his friend Ben. Flora and Julian have a daughter, Ruby, who as the book opens is about to graduate from high school. Margot is married to David, a gifted heart surgeon who suffered a stroke early in their marriage and has had to give up surgery for rehabilitation work with stroke patients. Having no children themselves, they dote upon Ruby. While searching for a favorite old photograph of the five of them taken when Ruby was five, Flora stumbles upon Julien’s “lost” wedding ring, which he had told them he lost while swimming that long-ago summer. What really happened to the ring will shake the foundations of the couples’ marriages and friendships. Sweeney is an astute observer, and her characters ring true as does the ending. 307 pp.
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