A review by ericgaryanderson
Southern Cross the Dog by Bill Cheng

3.0

Well, there was a microburst of buzz about this novel, in large part because Bill Cheng was said to have "gotten" the Deep South without ever having lived there. (Cheng was born in Queens and lives in Brooklyn.) I found the writing to be perfectly capable and even smooth, with only one passage that glaringly, blindingly, obviously impersonates Faulkner. But, through and through, it's hard for me to say that any passage in the book is not an impersonation, in some way, of a Deep South that US culture writ large enables Cheng to put on paper. The Blues! The Cajuns! The Poverty! Actually, I think that Cheng tries to create a main character who IS the blues -- kind of like what might happen if EVERYthing about a character's life might could be a line in a blues. Does it work? Maybe. As I say, this is a perfectly readable novel; but it is undeniably derivative.