Is a river alive was one of my top reads last year - a book with real character, taste, and profile (much like the mighty rivers of our lives). I was lucky enough to chat to Robert about this book, where he left me with two questions that thoroughly shaped how I read this title and then reviewed what I had previously read. 1. Do we each have a river inside of us? 2. Is there really a difference between fiction and non-fiction? This book is no wash-away in providing these answers as the Macfarlane unspurls the lives and livelihoods of what we know about our environments. From source to mouth, back page to front page, river bank to bank, this is a true titular titan. Thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed, and a forever recommend.

Brilliant pacing, stylish prose and fascinating characters… oh and it’s non fiction? Sign me up.I absolutely loved this. With Robert, we visit the Ecuador Cloud Forest, Chennai in India and the Mutehekau Shipu river basin in northern Canada. He centres indigenous voices and generational schools of thought but really takes it back to basics - reframing discussions of a river ‘which’ runs across a peninsula to the river ‘who’ flows to the sea. So powerful, personal and for me, deeply hopeful that even in dire circumstances a river and its local community can resist multinational powers. ‘The forest listens. The river sings. We do not find the second mushroom.’

MacFarlane is such an exciting and beautiful writer, it's difficult to convey how extraordinary this book is. Everything about it is perfect.

An engaging and beautifully written journey through the world of rivers and those trying to protect them by granting them legal status, crammed with almost unbelievably quirky characters (especially Giuliana and her supernatural connection to fungi). Macfarlane travels across Ecuador, India and Canada as he explores the role rivers play in both the natural world and our society. His writing is absolutely gorgeous throughout and lends the rivers a poetic character. A vital read in these times of economic collapse and societal pressure, and recommended for nature and travel lovers alike.

I am puzzled by the praise that has been heaped on this book. I hated it, and felt cheated of the hours I had spent reading it. I wouldn’t have finished it had it not been a book club choice. The question that the book asks, “is a river alive?” is a reasonable one. And the accompanying idea that a river should become a “legal person” is also worth exploring. This would mean that a river could take legal action against those that do it harm. The argument is that if a company can have legal rights, then why not a river? Why not indeed! The problem is that the book spends very little time exploring these ideas after the introduction. Instead, it is an account of three journeys that Robert MacFarlane makes to rivers in Ecuador, India and Canada. The rivers in Ecuador and Canada are under threat of development, the rivers in India are either dead or dying through pollution. Essentially, they are extreme adventure holidays for MacFarlane, rather than serious analysis or study. Indeed, I may have nodded off during the India section, but he seems to spend most of it in an apartment looking at wasps’ nests or on the beach collecting turtle eggs. So the river question was certainly not high on the agenda during that visit. The text is at times extremely pretentious. MacFarlane’s motto seems to be, why use a short comprehensible word when a long arcane one will do. His tendency to do this increases as he nears the end of a section and is starting to become reflective. This example is towards the end of his Ecuador visit: “I wonder how on earth to write about the anima of this place; what language might meet its aboundingly relational being, could convey this emerald pluriverse where life forms and forms of life become metamorphically indistinguishable from one another” Or this example from his Canadian trip: “The history of literature is littered with the debris of attempts to utter water: a vast Oort cloud of fragments shrouding a presence which declines articulation and resists correspondence. Faced with a river, as with a god, apprehension splinters into apophasis; deixis is dismantled. The alien will not be articulated. Alive, yes, but not in a way we might speak it.” This obscure vocabulary is so abundant that there is even a glossary! Yes, a glossary. It’s not comprehensive, so having Google to hand is also recommended. There are a fair amount of magical, mystical, and superstitious elements in his narrative. These further undermine any attempt I might have made to take him seriously. He does deploy occasionally a well-crafted metaphor that helps us to imagine the beautiful scenery he is encountering. But he or his publisher has felt the need to include some pictures as well. I appreciated the motivation, but sadly the pictures were poor – black and white with bad reproduction. There were some positives from the book. He met some interesting people. Giulana Furci sounds like an extraordinary person, if a little obsessed by fungi. Equally, I was glad to meet Yuvan Ives, among other things an environmental campaigner in India, an amazing and brave man. If there was any doubt that this book is not about ecology or nature, but is really about Robert MacFarlane, then look no further than the last chapter. He imagines his ashes being scattered by his children over a spring near his home in Cambridgeshire. It is mawkish and self-obsessed.