Don't Stop Snowing - by Gabriel Bump (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A deeply personal and funny novel from the winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award, about embracing one's own troubled self, demons and all. Perfect for readers of Percival Everett, Kevin Wilson, and Brandon Taylor's The Late Americans.

Fresh out of grad school in Michigan, on the brink of despair, directionless, David worries his parents. They don't know how to heal him. His doctor suggests that he needs to gain some perspective, and possibly a relocation would help. Maybe there is such a thing as a geographical cure?

Snowy, grey Buffalo is not the first place that comes to mind when you think of a curative place, but maybe time with his cousin Flip will help David to forget his own troubled past. But as it turns out, Flip's life and state of mind is even unsteadier than his own. Suddenly enlisted to take care of his cousin and to even fill in for him at his job, David falls into a new life and a new way of seeing the world. A world where, come to think of it, he doesn't mind the snow.

Don't Stop Snowing is a fresh and honest--and funny--story of the struggles we all face as we realize that we don't just inherit eye, hair, and skin color, but also the complicated psyches of our parents.

Review Quotes

"Bump (Everywhere You Don't Belong) spins an affecting story of a young man's efforts to escape from the shadow of his brilliant but troubled father. . . . The contrasts between the relative comfort of David's bourgeois upbringing and the hardscrabble realities of working-class Buffalo sharpen the tale. It's a memorable portrait of a young man who finds refuge in literature.""--Publishers Weekly

"Bump suggests that books can offer a refuge and sense of order that messy humans usually fail to provide . . . Typical for Bump, there are some entertainingly absurdist scenes . . . David's biracial identity (his mother is Black, his father white) is just one example of the dualities Bump explores throughout the book: working-class and ivory tower, sober and using, snow and sunshine. . . a compassionate portrait of a man slogging through 'academic emotional molasses' to something like true feeling. A quirky but affecting story of reshaping oneself outside of one's parents' mold."

--Kirkus Reviews

"His best book yet--a mapping of literature onto life that's fun and aching in equal measure...Joycean, Buffalonian, Bumpian."--Ed Park, author of Same Bed, Different Dreams

About the Author

Gabriel Bump grew up in South Shore, Chicago. His debut novel, Everywhere You Don't Belong, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2020 and won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Fiction, the Heartland Booksellers Award for Fiction, and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association's First Novelist Award. His second novel, The New Naturals, was a Washington Post, Boston Globe, and New York Times Notable Book of 2023. Bump's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts in the MFA Program for Poets and Writers.