Macfarlane writes beautifully and pithily. Poetry and fact become one and the same in this beautiful call to action for rivers. A must read.

Gosh. I’ve just finished reading ‘Is A River Alive?’ - I am so so grateful to the publishers for sending me an advanced copy. I started bookselling around the publication of ‘Underland’ and soon found Rob’s work and his gorgeous words for myself, and he quickly become a favourite author. You shouldn’t always meet your ‘heroes’ but on first meeting, behind a stage at Cambridge Folk Festival, we spoke for a while about all number of things (not least our joint admiration for Johnny Flynn). He was generous with his time, a kind soul, and this generosity and kindness oozes through the pages of his narrative non-fiction books. It is so exciting to be bookselling on publication of a new ‘big’ Robert Macfarlane book. Already, when I start to talk about Rob’s books the words flow from me - I cannot wait to be recommending this to customers. It helps that the cover art by Stanley Donwood is as stunning as the contents of the book - and looks even more vibrant in person! You might refer to Rob as a staple of the genre - but what genre? Writing on place? Travel writing? Nature? Science? Memoir? Politics? As always, he defies and blends genres here. Politically charged, yes, but full of so much humanity and a deep appreciation of nature. In truth, only Rob could’ve written this book. And everyone should read it. ‘Is A River Alive?’ explores ‘the lives, the deaths and the rights of rivers’ (as Rob so succinctly puts it in the excellent new episode of the Waterstones podcast). I feel that the world’s rivers couldn’t wish for a better advocate - but that many others (thankfully) already exist, and we meet them through the course of the book. The book is split into three sections, with Rob visiting three places, meeting three rivers and three main ‘characters’, a trio of magnificent humans tied together by their love for rivers, and their recent experiences of grief. The rivers, as much as the brilliant people Rob meets along the way, are so full of life. But are they alive? What a question. The supporting cast, if you will, of people and places, is excellent. Not least Cosmo Sheldrake - one of my favourite musicians with a truly unique way of seeing (and hearing) the natural world, and brother of Merlin Sheldrake (of Entangled Life fame.) The book starts strong with Rob and Cosmo heading off into an Ecuadorian cloud forest and I was hooked until the very last pages… with an epilogue that had me weeping, tears streaming, flowing like a river. We are water bodies after all. Whether up the road from me with his son Will, looking at a stream near their home in Cambridge, or half way across the world, through these pages I am right there with Rob. His writing, as ever, draws you right in. I might not have been in the catacombs of Paris (Underland) or up a mountain (Mountains of the Mind) and I certainly haven’t been kayaking on a Canadian river, but Rob brings you along to all of these places. His prose is beautiful (and at times startling - there are some nail-biting segments here, that’s for sure), and his writing conversational. This is a story of people as much as of place, and we’re along the journey with them all. This book is so many things at once. A conversation, a debate, an interrogation, poetical prose on the beauty and ferocity of nature… it has been described as Rob’s most political and personal book, and it is all the better for it. Read it - you absolutely must!

Buy it. It’s the essential book of the year. I have spent more time than I would care to admit on clever openings to this review, but those two words are all you need, really. You can stop reading now, provided you have resolved to buy the book. So much of the intellectual energy of the world is tied up in explaining the complex problems of our complex world in complex ways and at exhaustive length, in seemingly infinite variations. How wonderful to be reminded that, for all the sound and fury, the most vital questions remain thrillingly simple. ‘Is A River Alive?’. The crux of the book is essentially ‘go to a place where humanity (or ‘greed’, indistinguishable for these purposes) is destroying something majestic and irreplaceable in exchange for material gain (usually a slight increase in share price). When there, find people of steadfast humanity and ask them questions about it. Macfarlane shows you the avariciousness of the ones annihilating rainforests and river deltas and glaciers in search of a 0.2% increase in GDP or something equally devoid of meaning, and introduces you to people with luminous hearts who think that is a stupid idea. And, of course, it is. Of course a river is alive, can be hurt, can be killed. Of course purposefully poisoning it is a crime. Of course anyone that does so should be punished. Macfarlane would never be so blunt as to make a demand, but when the truth is so obvious, what would you need to? The sad and insane truth is that it does need to be pointed out - that a river is alive. Because the way we have been told to think about the natural world is bizarre and wrong, that our endless consumption of everything we can grab or burn or dam is somehow our ‘right’. Make no mistake, for all of Macfarlane’s gentleness and warmth, he is a radical and this book something of a manifesto. It shouldn’t be of course, he’s just a nice man talking sense, but the world has made a radical of him. I’m making the book sound angry, which it isn’t. It generates its share of fury, but the book itself is above all that. It’s profoundly humane and intellectually generous, spending much more time on the miracles of the natural world and the people who comprehend it than on the infinitely forgettable people trying to wring value from it. He spends time with his friends, in some of the most remarkable places on earth, and he passes that wonder on to you. A remarkable book.

I had a long flight on Tuesday night and read this entire book in one, delicious gulp. I loved it so much. I have already talked about it with multiple friends, recommended it on Substack and raved enthusiastically about it to all and sundry. Macfarlane visits three, very different rivers in an attempt to get to the bottom of the question; 'Is a river alive?' The environmental message is pretty dire with regard to our waterways and Macfarlane never shies away from this, but at the same time he somehow manages to be enthusiastic, compassionate and slightly hopeful. It's brilliant.

At first, when I read the blurb for this book, I was confused as to how rivers could be considered alive but I read Underland and loved it so thought, why not I’ll give this a go. I was very pleasantly surprised. Robert Macfarlane takes the reader along with him on this epic adventure of witnessing three rivers; one saved from death, one dying, and one under threat of dying. And yes, I use dying as I very quickly learnt that a river is, in fact, alive. Macfarlane’s writing is like nothing I’ve come across before - the poetic styling of his writing captures the imagination and forces you to look at nature and the world around you in a new light; ill never be able to look at a river the same way again. A very timely and necessary book given all the water pollution that’s currently happening and a book I thoroughly enjoyed.