Here, just on the lip of the river's mouth, is the point--not rights, but language--toward which the whole book, toward which all of Macfarlane's books have been flowing ... his precise, first-person, metaphorically rich ekphrastic prose, the fresh way he bends verbs and sentences to fit the contours of the land argues against the strictly ideal, cultural construction of the world.--Daegan Miller "Literary Hub"
[A] portal of a book, lucid and luminous, hinged on something particular and urgent ... And then there are the rivers themselves, rendered in prose so incandescent it leaves you lit up for the inside, the world shimmering in the golden beam of this vast and generous mind.--Maria Popova "Marginalian"
The author of Underland lends his expertise to raise awareness about a part of nature that is often taken for granted. Readers see that while rivers can be easily wounded, they can also quickly heal--if given the right care.--Olivia B. Waxman "Time"
Is a River Alive? draws on two marvelous currents in British letters, the hyperliterate adventurer (Tutira, The Road to Oxiana, The Living Mountain) and the place magics of Susan Cooper's Thames Valley, L. M. Boston's Green Knowe, and Algernon Blackwood's chiller The Willows. Its language is bedazzled.--Anne Matthews "American Scholar"
Macfarlane's accessible, poetic descriptions will transport you along with him to rivers in Canada, India, and Ecuador. ... The next time you set foot in nature, the sense of awe and reverence he crafts will be right there with you.--David Coupaud "Esquire"
Is a River Alive? is a wide-ranging feat of reporting that wends between the waters of three disparate places ... Macfarlane's prose is vivid, sometimes even flowery ... It is not just informative but frequently beautiful, full of luscious lines.--Becca Rothfeld "Washington Post"
Macfarlane's prose offers a glorious invitation to return to one's child-mind and its inherent wonder. ... Is a River Alive? illustrates what resistance to extraction can look like on the ground, and also what might be awakened in us when we begin to live with rivers, recognizing them as co-creators of our past, our present, and--more and more--our future.--Elizabeth Rush "Atlantic"
Few nature writers working today produce work with the unassuming elegance and undisguised wonder that are evident on Macfarlane's every page.--Colin Dwyer "NPR"
A profoundly beautiful and moving work.--Clea Simon "Boston Globe"
As beautiful as the rivers and the hope he's describing.--Valorie Castellanos Clark "Los Angeles Times"
Everyone who has ever found something to love in a river should find something to love in this book. It is a masterpiece.-- "Economist"
For all the book's questing intellectualism, it is a primal, sensual, and frequently swashbuckling adventure ... Macfarlane deftly moves between political reportage, prose poetry, and cultural anthropology.--Lewis Gordon "Atmos"
Haunting ... Macfarlane places the reader in immersive contact with the nature we have been lulled and dulled into regarding as mere backdrop to human activity.--Ellen Wayland-Smith "Los Angeles Review of Books"
Moving and beautiful ... If we're lucky, we do not have to go far to find a stream or river to sit by. The revelations in this passionate book will make that quiet, common experience even more life-giving.--Pamela Miller "Minnesota Star Tribune"
Running like a crosscurrent beneath Macfarlane's passionate, activist storytelling is a bracingly new approach to nature writing. It swirls together a Mike Davis-level mastery of earth science [and] a Philip Larkin-esque ear for the music of sentences.--Mark Dery "4Columns"
Such is [Macfarlane's] literary ability that he largely delivers revelation in the end.--Mary Ellen Hannibal "Science"
What his brilliant colleague Richard Powers has done for trees and oceans, Robert Macfarlane here does for embattled waterways.--Pico Iyer "Air Mail"
A lyrical inquiry into the implications of treating rivers as living beings worthy of reverence and legal rights. ... Macfarlane skillfully braids his immersive travel writing with illuminating historical background, all told in lithe prose. Nature lovers will be riveted.--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
The arguments for nature's rights, the drama of [Macfarlane's] encounters, the crimes against rivers and all that they nurture, and the valor, genius, and uncanny gifts of eco-activists are all conveyed in gorgeously vibrant, fresh, and gripping language. The result is a ravishing and enlightening inquiry shaped by hydropoetics and a deeply considered commitment to rejuvenating, cherishing, and protecting rivers and all of nature.--Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
Are rivers alive? Macfarlane delivers a lucid, memorable argument in the affirmative. ... In delightfully eccentric company and guided by the wisdom of an Indigenous woman ... Macfarlane travels through territory so rugged that 'even the trout have portage trails, ' returning with hard-won wisdom about our evanescence and, one hopes, a river's permanence and power to shape our lives for the better.--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Robert Macfarlane is one of earth's keenest celebrants.--Diane Ackerman, author of The Zookeeper's Wife
Robert Macfarlane's writing reminds us of the astonishing variety of things you can see when you go at walking speed, and of how strange and rich the world is.--Phillip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy
One of the big publishing events (if not the biggest) of 2025--a new book by Robert Macfarlane ... Personal as well as political, Is a River Alive? is almost as certain to shift readerly perspectives as it is to be a bestseller.-- "Guardian"
A rich and visionary work of immense beauty. Robert Macfarlane is a memory keeper. What is broken in our societies, he mends with words. Rarely does a book hold such power, passion, and poetry in its exploration of nature. Read this to feel inspired, moved and, ultimately, alive with the world.--Elif Shafak, author of There Are Rivers in the Sky
Robert Macfarlane is a magician with words. His writing is like a vortex ... once caught, you're pulled deeper and deeper with each page.--Andrea Wulf, author of The Invention of Nature
Like its subject, Is a River Alive? is work of flow and counter-flow. It is lyrical, evocative, closely observed, and deeply moving. Robert Macfarlane offers new ways to think and, just as importantly, feel about the majestic and mysterious non-human world.--Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction
Is a River Alive? is a beautifully written, poetic testament to the vitality of the Earth and the forms of politics that can be based upon that premise.--Amitav Ghosh, author of Sea of Poppies
Is a River Alive? is one of the best books I've read in a very long time--exciting, brilliantly comprehensive, mind-altering. In one of its many stunning moments, Macfarlane describes the myriad rivers trapped and buried under the concrete of our cities. 'Daylighting' occurs on those rare occasions when these ghost-rivers are dug out & released to the surface to feel the sun, to expand--majestic creatures--and spread life once again. To read this book is to feel your ghosted soul undergo such daylighting--metaphysical, political, emotional, linguistic. Any soul going dormant, any citizen going numb, will be revivified and propelled back to their essential core, where rage, wonder, and imagination intertwine, and a powerful hope for the earth arises. A spellbinding, life-changing work.--Jorie Graham, author of To 2040
Robert Macfarlane is a once-in-a-generation virtuoso, and I don't know when his kaleidoscopic language and world-expanding scholarship have been used to more potent effect than in this impassioned, resounding affirmative to the title's urgent question.--John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather
This book is a beautiful, wild exploration of an ancient idea: that rivers are living participants in a living world. Robert Macfarlane's astonishing telling of the lives of three rivers reveals how these vital flow forms have the power not only to shape and reshape the planet, but also our thoughts, feelings, and worldviews. Is a River Alive? is a breathtaking work that speaks powerfully to this moment of crisis and transformation.--Merlin Sheldrake, author of Entangled Life
This book is itself a river of poetic prose, an invitation to get onboard and float through the rapids of encounters with places and people, the eddies of ideas, to navigate the resurgence of Indigenous worldviews through three extraordinary journeys recounted with a vividness that lifts readers out of themselves and into these waterscapes. Read it for pleasure, read it for illumination, read it for confirmation that our world is changing in wonderful as well as terrible ways.--Rebecca Solnit, author of Orwell's Roses