Is a River Alive?: a 'powerful synthesis of literature, activism and ethics'

Rivers in Britain – and indeed across the world – are in an abject state, said Alex Preston in The Observer. Mainly, they are "dying" because of pollution (in Britain chiefly sewage), but the "riverine crisis" has other causes, including drought resulting from climate change and the repercussions of "our wish to harness their power".

This context lends timeliness to Robert Macfarlane's latest book, which centres on his trips to four river systems. "Three are distant: the rivers of the Los Cedros cloud forest in Ecuador; the polluted waterways threading through and beneath Chennai; and the Mutehekau Shipu (Magpie River) flowing into the Gulf of St Lawrence in Quebec." The fourth is a small chalk spring close to Macfarlane's home in Cambridge, which he visits "before and after each far-flung journey". On each trip, Macfarlane spends time with activists, who urge him towards an eco-spiritualist conception of rivers as being somehow "alive". Full of "sublime" writing, "Is a River Alive?" is a "powerful synthesis of literature, activism and ethics", and another triumph from this wonderful travel writer.

Macfarlane is a bit too indulgent of his activist companions, whom some readers may find "unbearable", said James McConnachie in The Sunday Times. There's Giuliana, a "quadrilingual biologist-campaigner-filmmaker" whose forearms "writhe with fungi tattoos"; and César, who looks like a warrior priest from "Star Wars", and apparently has a "slate-cleaving intelligence". At their urging, Macfarlane does odd things, such as tell "mushrooms it is nice to meet them". But when he "gets off the crystal unicorn and gets back in the actual water, the book is a delight". As ever, his prose is sumptuous – "you could gorge yourself on his metaphors and similes" – and there is plenty of gripping storytelling, including a masterful account of a trip down a whitewater river in Quebec that goes "epically wrong".

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Striving to see rivers as living beings, Macfarlane grants them human pronouns, said Blake Morrison in The Guardian. Instead of which or that, he explains, "I prefer to speak of rivers who flow." But at times, "doubts creep in", such as when Macfarlane wonders if granting rivers selfhood is indulging "in a kind of cosplay animism".

"Is a River Alive?" is at its best when he abandons such musings, and concentrates on describing nature and the threats that besiege these landscapes, said Guy Stagg in Literary Review. The real achievement of this "stirring" book is to make readers share his "sense of awe".