LITERATURE
South Shore Novelist Mixes Humor and Tragedy
A review of Gabriel Bump’s 2020 novel, Everywhere You Don’t Belong.
BY SAGE BEHR
C
laude McKay Love is funny. I just don’t know if he knows it. When we first meet Claude, the protagonist and narrator of Gabriel Bump’s 2020 debut novel Everywhere You Don’t Belong, he is very young, probably four or five. Initially, Claude’s age seems to account for the warped time and non sequiturs that lend scenes a surreal and hilarious quality. Claude describes an early memory: his grandma swings him by the ankle to sit him on the curb and he watches his father wrestle a man, described as having a sad face, outside of the house. “On his tongue: something important and tragic, a foreverburied secret.” When the cops arrive, Claude is applauding, and the cops laugh at the “ridiculous black-on-black crime.” By the time Claude’s parents abandon him in the second chapter, it is clear that this book flicks humor like a knife, shocking 6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
you before you can feel the pain. It is also clear that Claude’s bizarre narration is not just a symptom of his youth. The sharpness of detail Claude provides is staggering in moments, creating a disorienting contrast with the lack of explanation. “When Mom and Dad had their final fight, we were late to an all-black rendition of Fiddler on the Roof...Dad was out there without a boat, without pants or suit jacket, down to his underwear.” This moment doesn’t become any clearer in context—in the paragraph that surrounds the sentence, there are no clues to indicate that Claude’s father is even near a body of water. Scene-setting information is doled out with such an unexpected rhythm that it keeps the reader searching for answers to fairly basic questions. What was Dad doing “out there” in the first place? How did he get in the water? Is he high, or having a mental break? Is this
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PHOTO OF GABRIEL BUMP BY JEREMY HANDRUP
funny? Is it sad? The reader only receives facts in dubious breadcrumbs or direct statements, when Claude unexpectedly calls something what it is, or through the commentary of another adult present. The moments of lucidity remain a mainstay of Claude’s affect. Even as he grows older and his perception of the world develops, Claude remains an eccentric narrator for whom time and context are constantly shifting substances. Claude lives with his grandma and her friend Paul in a South Shore home that is as caring as it is unconventional. Paul and Grandma bicker but still care for each other. They criticize Claude
bluntly but never without compassion. They display deep self-understanding while living with a sometimes gleeful denial of reality. Claude is the ultimate observer, communicating his interiority in poetic snippets that intersect with hilariously frank descriptions of the world around him. When Claude loses his virginity in a thirty-second tryst with a first-time houseguest, he portrays an immature, awkward moment as unanticipated, brief, and yet profound. “Dawn, chemistry, physics, melding; rush, fire, an eclipse between us. Holding Janice like that—never again would I feel that close
