Amanda Lee Koe's sophomore novel, Sister Snake, is a deliciously provocative examination of female agency, with startling, serpentine bite. Once upon a time in Hangzhou, China, a white krait and a green viper became "sworn sisters" after the latter nursed the former back to health from "unspeakable violence." Disillusioned by her own kind, the white snake found herself observing humans, convinced they "carried themselves with logic and noblesse." She longed to be human, and although her sister was satisfied with their way of life, the green snake "would try anything once." In the year 815, the green snake procured "lotus seeds... capable of bestowing human form and ageless immortality." After 800 years in self-cultivation, the sisters finally transitioned in 1615. The white snake named herself Bai (for white) Suzhen (because it sounded like an honorable scholar poet's virtuous wife). The green snake eventually chose Emerald.
Fast forward to now. Wealthy Su lives in Singapore--"just like her, Singapore has a meticulous and cautious character." She's married to a parliamentary minister and "settled into the rosy modesty of the traditional-wife life" because she's long realized that "conformity makes for excellent camouflage." Restless Emerald, who "moved cities every two or three years," is currently living off sugar daddies in New York City. When an encounter with her latest makes news headlines--Central Park, NYPD, gunshots--Google Alerts pings Su's phone and she's on the next flight to JFK. As fraught as their sororal reunion is, Emerald nevertheless agrees to go back to Singapore with Su. The pair haven't lived together since 1868, and sharing the same space--as luxurious and entitled as that may be--is not going to have a happy ending... although it might inspire much-needed new beginnings.
Koe (Delayed Rays of a Star) is a fabulously subversive, snarkily insightful writer with an extraordinarily keen eye for contemporary human observations: forever youthful Su gets regular treatments to look age-appropriately older so her publicly important husband won't be seen as a skirt-chaser; Emerald's Greenpoint roommate quips, "How Goop of you," when she reveals her transformative self-cultivation to attain the ability to dance "between both skins." In her acknowledgements, Koe cites China's ancient folktale "Legend of the White Snake" and the 1993 film Green Snake as setting her "imagination on fire." She also admits to having "had so much fun writing Sister Snake it might be criminal." Her readers will undoubtedly feel the same. --Terry Hong
Shelf Talker: Amanda Lee Koe's sophomore novel, Sister Snake, is a serpentine tale--with delicious bite--of two strikingly different shapeshifting, immortal sisters.