“A comically dark coming-of-age story about growing up on the South Side of Chicago, but it’s also social commentary at its finest, woven seamlessly into the work . . . Bump’s meditation on belonging and not belonging, where or with whom, how love is a way home no matter where you are, is handled so beautifully that you don’t know he’s hypnotized you until he’s done.” —Tommy Orange, The New York … New York Times Book Review
In this alternately witty and heartbreaking debut novel, Gabriel Bump gives us an unforgettable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude isn’t dangerous or brilliant—he’s an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth: childhood friendships, basketball tryouts, first love, first heartbreak, picking a college, moving away from home.
Claude just wants a place where he can fit. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights–era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change; yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America.
Percolating with fierceness and originality, attuned to the ironies inherent in our twenty-first-century landscape, Everywhere You Don’t Belong marks the arrival of a brilliant young talent.
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Everywhere You Don’t Belong is a little like a runaway train and I mean that in the best way. You think you know where you’re headed and what’s going to happen but then you hit a bump and things speed in a completely different direction and all you can do is hang on and hope that it all end well.
This debut novel centers on Claude McKay Love, a fairly ordinary black boy being raised by his grandmother and her eccentric gay friend, Paul, on the South Side of Chicago in what I think are the 2000s (it sounds like Obama is senator when he’s mentioned although it’s never confirmed). He’s got a lot to deal with – abandoned by his parents, bullied by schoolmates, dealing with riots and violence outside his front door, losing friends, falling in love and having to live up to his grandmother’s expectation that he’ll grow into a social activist like she is – and he’s not always able to cope. And even though it’s set what I think is 20 years ago, unfortunately the issues the book covers are still timely – when an innocent black boy is killed by police, a riot erupts on the South Shore changing Claude’s life and the lives of those around him forever.
Bump writes in what almost feels like a stream of consciousness. It took me a while to get into the rhythm but once I did, it really added to the story. There’s a lot of humor especially in the characters’ bluntness (I loved Grandma and want a prequel about her backstory with Paul!) but the book also has heart and tackles some difficult topics. Claude isn’t a tough guy. He actually cries over everything and you kind of can’t blame him.
The second half is when it went off the rails for me (again, not in a bad way) and we follow Claude to college in Missouri. I was less interested in his experience there but by then I’d become so attached to Claude that I was willing to hold on to see how the ride ended and I was glad I did.
The early chapters of this book are close to perfection for me. Bump’s writing is sharp and clever, the plot is layered and I couldn’t get enough of Claude’s childhood friends Nugget, Bubbly and Jonah. I wish the rest of the book had lived up to the start but I still enjoyed it. It’s a really worthwhile and quick read that I bet a lot of people will be talking about. I can’t wait to see what’s next from this author!
My Review of
EVERYWHERE YOU DON’T BELONG
By Gabriel Bump
Gifted, Published & on Tour with @AlgonquinBooks
On Sale 1/12/21
*****
The story of a young black teen in a very realistic world, growing up in the South Side of Chicago. Born to parents that eventually abandon him and a grandmother who takes it upon herself and her friend Paul to raise Claude. Claude his a very endearing teen who always seems to go out of his way for others but does nothing for himself. His grandmother pushes him to get a good education and to stay away from the drugs, gangs & violence that can easily deter him from a future. The sad moments are many but just as much are the humorous moments that I grew to treasure. A great coming of age showing how his relationships with friends, love and how they got him through tough times and how he charted a path to success that led to college. But in the end it seems there is no escape from the injustices of a black man and nowhere you can really be safe.
I loved this Author’s humor, poetic writing style and the character development. It is a book I recommend reading for sure.
I wanted to like this book. I really think the story that it’s attempting to tell is one that we need more of. For me, however, it fell short. I found the writing to be too choppy and the story hard to follow. Toward the end, I was able to finally get drawn in and eager to see what would happen, but even the ending felt a bit flat for me.
Sometimes you open a book and you know from the very first page, this thing’s alive. You know what I mean? (How often does this not happen? You open a book and it’s just a book?) Gabriel Bump’s Everywhere You Don’t Belong’s got a racing pulse, and a beautiful propulsion, a ton of humor, wonderful dialogue, deep characterization, and cold-eyed-truth.
Some works you read them and you sense that you will never quite engage life as you did before. Bump is a storyteller at the top of his game, testifying through characters we love and hate, with dialogue so lean, mean and ready, it’s explosive. Everywhere You Don’t Belong is a literary blues, raw and rowdy and big and brawling, yet smooth and polished and crafty, a novel that a city like Chicago deserves. Gabriel has achieved here that special confluence of the writer, the craft, and the moment that makes art we cannot afford to ignore, especially at this moment.
This book is astonishing. You’ll be smiling even as your heart is breaking, and you’ll tip willingly into this world Bump offers you because what appears again and again are spectacular beams of light, also called love, also called hope, also called family. Gabriel Bump has established himself as a stunning talent to be reckoned with.
One solace for living in dark times is they conjure singular new artists like Gabriel Bump whose visions may shepherd us into the light. Everywhere You Don’t Belong is a startlingly powerful novel, an unusual concentration of opposing forces — blind rage vs. empathy, comedy vs. tragedy, despair vs. hope — that resists every label it evokes: picaresque, bildungsroman, generational family saga, political novel, comic novel, love story. It’s all of those things at once and much more—an instant American classic for the post-Ferguson/Trump era.
A brilliant and harrowing debut.
In Everywhere You Don’t Belong, Gabriel Bump completely, beautifully, and energetically illuminates the heretofore unrecognized lines connecting Ellison’s Invisible Man to Johnson’s Jesus’ Son. This is a startling, original, and hilarious book. I look forward to reading it again.