Book Review: The Comeback | Ella Berman

Haunting and raw. The Comeback by Ella Berman tells the story of a young Hollywood star discovered as a young teen coming to grips with the incredibly damaging effects of sexual assault and predatory grooming. This is the story of a woman finding what is left of her after a man and society took so much.

Plot and Structure

The Comeback tells the story of Grace Turner, who was a teen in London who often felt outcast from her peers and jumps at the opportunity of a lifetime to star in a three-part movie series by acclaimed director Able Yorke. When Grace gets the role, her parents and younger sister are moved to California where they inexplicably choose to have a home in Annaheim while Grace is largely away from them in production and attending school on set.

When the book begins, Grace is 22 years-old and nearly a year prior she walked out of her life on the eve of the Golden Globes and returned home without telling anyone. Prior to leaving her life, Grace was spiraling out of control in a haze of drugs and alcohol, but has sobered up since returning home. She has a complicated relationship with her family, who seem slighted by her distance when she began her acting career. Her sister is quite a bit younger than her, and Grace seems to be realizing she hasn’t been a role model nor did she realize she was expected to be.

“What I couldn’t have predicted was how people would want more and more of me; I didn’t yet know how closely praise is linked to punishment, how I would never again determine my own value because I wasn’t so much a person as an idea, shaped not only by the people around the table with me that night but by the millions of people who would pay to watch my movies in years to come.”

The Comeback by Ella Berman

The story is told in the present and solely from Grace’s perspective, but it includes some flashbacks and stories from her past. Grace returns to her glass house in Hollywood, to a husband she holds in unrealistic high regard, like a saint. Grace left him with no notice, and she returns to him with a new girlfriend living in their house.

As Grace attempts to reclaim herself, she is lost unsure of who to turn to. Her husband, whom she left without warning, has moved on. Grace’s agent and team want her to get her career back on track. Grace’s best friend was being paid to be friends with her, so Grace questions if they are truly friends. Able has moved on from her and hasn’t cast her in his latest film, despite her once being his muse. In fact, the person who seems the more there for Grace is Able’s wife Emilia. But is Emilia doing this out of the goodness of her heart, or is she trying to make amends for what she suspects Able has done?

Themes and Characters

Originally started before the #metoo movement made headlines, The Comeback is a story of the damaging effect grooming and abuse have on vulnerable people trapped in unhealthy power dynamics.

The book focuses largely on the complicated and toxic relationship Grace has with director Able, though Able himself doesn’t appear almost at all in the present (and only in a shadowed form in flashbacks). He is a figure looming over Grace through her psyche. Meanwhile his wife Emilia is very present, doing her best to help Grace get back her life and career.

Grace (and the reader) spend much of the book questioning whether Emilia knows or suspects Able’s true nature. Grace asks several times why no one ever questioned the close relationship between this successful grown man and a teenager. The countless times the relationship is seen as flawless, with many applauding Grace as Able’s muse, and even those closest to them saying they couldn’t get between their closeness.

Meanwhile the reader gets an indirectly conveyed glimpse through Grace’s psyche, where it’s clear Grace felt trapped and unable to ask for help without ruining her career and her family’s wellbeing. Making the story more complicated, Grace isn’t exactly a likable character. By nature of how she was meticulously crafted to appeal to the public, Grace never feels like a real person. She is narcissistic and thinks constantly about what everyone else thinks of her. She is self-destructive and lashes out for attention. She is incapable of communicating as herself, and only seems to communicate through “playing herself” as a role.

I honestly think this portrayal of Grace is one of the most accurate and heartbreaking parts of her story. Grace isn’t a real person, she never had a chance to be one. Every interaction Grace has had since she was a teenager has been curated. As a teen joining Hollywood, Grace thinks mostly about how she won’t have to be bullied by her classmates anymore. When Able starts abusing her emotionally and eventually physically, Grace thinks about how awful it would be to return to her high school in disgrace and face the outcast life she had before.

Stories like these remind the reader of how young Grace is. As the book goes on, Grace begins to unravel. However, in a way Grace’s unraveling shows how strong she is. Grace isn’t really a fragile character, though she is a character who is victimized in terrible ways. As Grace struggles to tell her story, even just one time to a single person, Grace gains strength and simultaneously hurtles down a path that may end in redemption, destruction, or both.

Final Thoughts

Heartbreaking and important, The Comeback isn’t an easy book to read. I found it clever, though at times infuriating. One thing I had to reflect on and realize was likely an intentional choice by the author was how surface-level many elements of Grace’s story are. At times this can make the reading experience feel shallow, because you’re waiting for the author to really show Grace and Able having a confrontation, or for Grace to just say what she actually thinks (even to the reader).

However, this is a symptom of the abuse Grace experienced. Grace has split into the person that was created, that the audience adores, and the person she really is. Most of this book is about Grace finding out who that person is and whether she can let them have a voice. In the meantime, Grace is only able to process most of the trauma she has experienced through psychological distancing, leading to these vague and ill-defined memories and interactions.

A story of abuse and about a woman who is looking to find her voice when it was taken from her for so long. Powerful and raw.

About the Book (Goodreads)

Grace Turner was one movie away from Hollywood’s A-List. So no one understood why, at the height of her career and on the eve of her first Golden Globe nomination, she disappeared.

Now, one year later, Grace is back in Los Angeles and ready to reclaim her life on her own terms.

When Grace is asked to present a lifetime achievement award to director Able Yorke–the man who controlled her every move for eight years–she knows there’s only one way she’ll be free of the secret that’s already taken so much from her.

The Comeback is a moving and provocative story of justice–a true page-turner about a young woman finding the strength and power of her voice.