The Comeback

 Hello Interwebs!

Here's the last of the book reviews I have left to do and then I'll be all caught up on my reviews. The last book I finished, number 51 of the year, was The Comeback by Ella Berman. This was one of the Read with Jenna club picks. This is a contemporary new release from a debut author about a young actress that disappears on the eve of the Golden Globes and returns a year later, changed somehow. This is my favorite book I've read so far this year. I loved the characters and the stories and it was just flat out amazing. If you haven't read it yet, go do it now. I got my copy as an add-on to my Book of the month subscription and it was definitely $10 well spent. Anyway there are spoilers after the picture as usual. 

So The Comeback focuses on our main character, Grace Turner, who is an actress who was just short of being an A-list celebrity when she disappears just before the Golden Globes after she'd been nominated for the first time. No one knew where she went and no one knew when or if she'd be back. Now a year later she reappears in Los Angeles, but obviously not the same girl on top of her game. When we first meet Grace it's prior to her return to LA and she's lying low at her parents' suburban home in Anaheim. She's spending the days aimlessly walking the streets and spends silent, uncomfortable nights at home with her parents while her younger sister is away at boarding school. When her younger sister shows up unexpected after being suspended until after the New Year, Grace's mom says that the best thing for her to do is leave and go back to her life in LA. Grace does so without further comment early the next morning. In LA she finds that her husband has moved his new girlfriend into her house. She stays a few days before a friend helps her rent a house where she can watch the home of her old producer, Able Yorke. Able's gone, filming a movie on location but his wife discovers Grace is back in town and helps her by getting her hair done and giving her somewhere to be. During the whole thing you get in flashbacks that Able's the one who signed Grace back when she was Grace Hyde, a British school girl, for her first movie. He promised her parents that he and his wife would look after her and brought her under his wing. He mentally abused her on film sets, gaslit her so she thought she was crazy and wouldn't trust her own mind, and then finally he began sexually molesting her. She used drugs and alcohol to numb the pain at his advances and then overdosed. You learn that she was completely isolated from everyone who wasn't Able as a teenager, and even her relationship with her husband isn't a relationship between real people. It's between him and the act she puts on instead of being herself. She spends a whirlwind month in LA, culminating in a dinner with her husband in which he is disappointed that she doesn't recognize the restaurant they had dinner at on their wedding day and she throws in her face that she tried to tell him what Able was doing to her but he didn't listen before storming out. She ends up at Able's home on Christmas Eve, invited by his wife when he wasn't supposed to be home only to find the producer home with a raging party. When his wife confronts Grace about the possible affair between her and Able, Grace denies an affair but confirms the abuse. His wife throws everyone out and Grace drives Able to get more alcohol and deliberately crashes the car. Both are injured but survive. She lies low again first at her friends' home and then at her parents' home. Things come to a head with her family when she discovers that her sister is in more trouble than she thought and she decides she has to do something not just for herself but for all girls. Last minute she goes to the award ceremony where Able is getting a lifetime achievement award. She gets on the stage in front of everyone and tells them what Able did to her before she walks out to applause. The final chapter is a year later, her celebrating her birthday with her friends and family...both famous and not. There's a sense of hope at the end that her life is better and she made it better for others as well. 

I went into this book expecting it to be a trite, #metoo novel with a young actress whose life is ruined by an older producer/director who told her she owed him this much for making her. And in some ways this book was exactly that but it was more than that. It showed the trauma from all the abuse, the culmination being the sexual abuse, but the most damaging of the abuse was really the psychological and emotional abuse he started from the very beginning. Able made sure Grace was embarrassed by her family and isolated herself from them. Everyone who was part of her team: her agent, her publicist, they were all paid for by Able. He would ignore her on set and verbally abuse her until she would crawl to him for whatever scraps he'd throw. The physical/sexual abuse is what made her spiral into addiction but the emotional abuse is what kept her from getting help from anywhere. In the end, she got her strength from her sister and her experience. Grace's sister who is a high schooler was suspended for sending nudes, that turned out not to be her own but something she got off the internet. She is passionate and determined to fight back. At a party when she was going to get revenge she is filmed trying to get the boy to undress for her own hidden camera and its live-streamed to the whole world. Seeing the devastation wrought by her sister's peers gives Grace the strength to stand up not just for herself but for her sister and other girls. I loved this book so much and I especially loved an offhanded comment made by the hair dresser who does Grace's hair for her, "fuck shit up, little lion." The scene immediately after she tells her truth at the awards ceremony is one of the most striking images in the book. She walks out of the back doors of the theater like a queen, wearing a gunmetal gown like armor and passing over the stars on the Hollywood walk of fame, in the footsteps of everyone who came before. This book was beautiful and powerful and easily one of my favorite books of the year. 

I read this book from August 26th to August 31st and gave it a solid, no holds barred, 5/5 stars. I very much recommend this book to anyone looking for a great read and commend Ella Berman on having a very successful debut novel. 

Happy Reading,

Richelle and Emma