The Comeback

I received a digital advance copy of The Comeback by Ella Berman from the publisher (Penguin Random House). The Comeback is scheduled for release August 8, 2020.

The Comeback is the story of Grace Turner (really Grace Hyde), a Hollywood star who disappeared from the public eye a year ago, just as she was nominated for a Golden Globe. We join her in her parents house in Anaheim, where she has retreated to heal wounds that aren’t clear to us, or the public, at the start of the story. What we (and the public) know are that Grace was a child star who grew into an adult mess and then imploded. Now Grace has been pushed out of her parent’s house and back to L.A. where she struggles to piece herself back together while working through demons, memories, messy family dramas, and the ever present paparazzi.

Grace is a well-written unreliable narrator. There is a lot she doesn’t share with the reader, largely because she is actively blocking out certain memories (drugs and alcohol have hidden others). The larger cause of her unreliability is her very skewed perspective of both herself and the world around her. With Grace, we learn the cause of this unreliability and begin to get a more accurate view of Grace’s story as the novel progresses. We learn why she is so very broken, forcing us to root for her even when she is making questionable choices.

While the novel takes place largely in L.A., the city itself was rarely part of the story. Instead, the industry of Hollywood takes on the role of setting. Given Grace’s history of being discovered as a young teen, moved with her family from England, and then assigned a herd of adults to manage her every move, this makes sense and works well. Grace is far less in tune with her physical environment and how the world works than she is with the people to contact to adjust the environment to suit her needs. There is a lot of commentary regarding the industry throughout the novel, sometimes directly from Grace, but often from us as the reader seeing what the industry does to Grace.

The Comeback felt very real, as we followed Grace through the mess of recovering from from childhood stardom and into the larger mess of dealing with life as an adult. It’s hard to say this was an enjoyable read, as it was full of a lot of the nastier side of life, but I was pulled into and through the story as I wished for Grace to get herself together.