Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane is a luminous exploration of the natural world, inviting readers to see rivers as living beings deserving of respect both in our imagination and under the law. Known for his masterful prose, Macfarlane takes us on three remarkable journeys to the cloud-forests of Ecuador, the troubled waterways of India, and the wild rivers of Canada, weaving in the story of a fragile chalk stream near his home.

The book blends travel writing, natural history, and philosophy, challenging us to rethink our relationship with nature. Macfarlane’s vivid descriptions and thoughtful insights open up a new way of seeing the world that is both urgent and hopeful. This is a deeply important book that feels especially timely in an age of environmental crisis.

Personally, I found it both beautifully written and profoundly moving. It reminded me that how we value and protect nature could shape our future—and that every river has a story worth hearing.

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Is A River Alive by Robert Macfarlane is an expert craft of storytelling and research to answer the question about the liveliness of a river and if we as humans should consider a river to be alive.

I loved how the author brought you into the book with stories in the prologue and introduction and I also loved his emphasis on indigenous cultures and how he included their views in his research to find the answer to his question.

This book has a very interesting premise and the writing is absolutely beautiful, it however was just not for me. Based on the synopsis and the work I’ve been doing with non-fiction in school recently, I thought I could learn to love this book as well as expand my horizons. Unfortunately it did do the opposite and I found myself feeling forced to read it instead of finding any joy in the work.

None of this is the author’s fault, I just think I picked it up at a horrible time fresh out of school and assigned readings and all. I do think there is a wide market for it and I do think plenty of people will enjoy it, I just sadly wasn’t one of them although I appreciated the writing and the work that went into it.

I hope I can one day come back to this book with fresh eyes and find it a little more suited to my taste but for now, it’s not a bad book, it’s just not for me.

I found the book to be very well witten and
lyrical. The premise is whether a river is alive
and should a river be considered to be alive. The
eloquent prose brings the river to life in such a
way that it resembles a living, breathing being
with various creatures that satellite the river that
are a vital part of a river's health and wellbeing.
It shows two paths we can take: destroy it and
destroy ourselves or respect it as a living being
who has rights as any living being should, which
helps us thrive too. At first glance, it might seem
ludicrous to think of a river as alive, but maybe
we should. A river isn't just a river. It's a complex
system (alive) where the river and the life around
it are intertwined in such a way that if one falls,
they (we) all fall. The idea is so revolutionary and
the writing is so lush that you need to take a step
back while reading to fully absorb. This is not a
book to be speedily read but one to read slowly,
take notes, and think about whether a river is
alive. The short answer is yes. The longer answer
is to read the book and truly understand why the
answer is yes.

Beautifully written. Easy to understand. Writing your argument into stories will always work. I liked it so much that I've been convinced to try reading more nonfiction books. The way the author describes his experiences almost made me believe this wasn't a nonfiction. Weaving historical events into this was obviously a big part, but it struck home for me as I love to read about history. Mentions of the Saint Lawrence River were also everything to me, as a Canadian!! This is not the in depth review I was hoping to write, but I hope Robert hears about how much I enjoyed his book.

I felt very lucky to get an ARC of this book! Explores the idea that rivers are living beings. It blends research and the authors own reporting with a very poetic style and a sense of humour that made this an easy read.

The pacing was a bit off at times, but overall this was a really impactful read that left me confident in agreeing with the authors proposal that rivers have sentience.

Is a River Alive? by Robert MacFarlane captured my attention from the very beginning. It is a novel in which he delves into the belief that a river is a living breathing entity that needs respect and the protection of law. Man, often in the pursuit of progress or wealth, does not often stop to think of the consequences of his decisions and actions. In this novel, MacFarlane takes us on a journey to Ecuador, India, and Canada after recognizing the plight of the chalk spring river near his Cambridge home. His topic is an important one highlighting the dire consequences of pollution, building dams, mining, warming temperatures, concrete developments, and droughts have on our water systems and rivers. You would think that this book would be depressing as we learn about the effects of ‘progress and how little of our water remains clean and clear. Instead, with his beautiful flowing words, descriptions, and the rivers themselves we hear and see the beauty and the hope that rivers are characters in themselves. We begin to understand through recognizing the nature\rivers as viable entities, we, might change our attitudes and laws, to create legislation to protect before we run out of clean water. This is a thought provoking, beautifully written booked filled with imagery that will stay with me for a long time, and I encourage everyone to read it.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my ARC.

Is a river alive? Spoiler alert: The answer is YES, and humans should stop arrogantly trying to control or pollute them as though we’re not committing mass murder that threatens to wipe out all life on this planet. *breathes* Sorry, I’ll try not to make this an angry review. But honestly, I’m starting to think I shouldn’t read ecological nonfiction. I’m the choir that doesn’t need preaching to, so when they paint such a bleak picture of the damage humans are inflicting on the world, it just fills me with rage. Humans really are a scourge on this planet (and beyond, but that’s another rant for another day).

I suppose my visceral reaction to this book means that Macfarlane has done a good job with it. If you read it, you will feel the devastation of the earth’s dead and dying rivers, the grief of the Indigenous peoples who rely on and attempt to protect them, and the hope against hope of activists who are starting to see faint glimmers of understanding from the occasional government as they enact laws to grant rivers rights as living beings. By “occasional” I mean, like, maybe 2... but that’s a start, right?

I like the observation that humans are essentially bodies of water, and using that analogy (or statement of fact, really) to explain and perhaps even exploit our emotional connection with rivers. Also, I think Macfarlane does a good job of choosing which rivers to focus on and the order in which he writes about them. He takes us from heartwrenching descriptions of dead or dying rivers in Chennai to his rafting adventures on the Magpie River (aka Mutehekau Shipu), a Canadian river that is very much alive but under threat of destruction by the construction of dams. It’s a very effective narrative structure. By the end of this book, the conscientious reader is ready to dedicate their life to protecting this magnificent river, as though it’s the only one we have left.

I also appreciate the heavy focus on facts and figures in the first half of the book. We get a history lesson that stretches back to The Epic of Gilgamesh, as well as information on global geopolitics and the current Rights of Nature movement. These are the things I was hoping to find when I picked up this book. I’m very pleased to walk away from it knowing a lot more than I previously did about the fight to save our rivers.

Unfortunately, this is my second time reading Macfarlane, and it might be my last. There’s something about his writing style that doesn’t jive with me. I’m not a sense-oriented person, while he most certainly is, so the way he focuses on his personal, sensual experiences with nature kind of rubs me the wrong way. He also has a very poetic writing style that isn’t for everyone. I’m obviously in the minority on this, because he’s a very popular author. I just get tired of the word “I” in his books. And I always get the feeling that he fudges the details or the timeline of his adventures to imbue them with more meaning. I don’t know, it bugs me, but that’s just my personal take.

Conclusion
If you enjoy poetic writing and philosophizing about rivers and the natural world, you’ll probably love this. If you already believe that rivers are alive, as I do, you might end up a little traumatized to find out just how badly we humans treat them. However, if you’re expecting a scientific treatise proving once and for all that rivers are living, breathing entities, that isn’t what this is. Someone who comes to this book saying, “No. Change my mind,” could probably walk away feeling no different. But I’m not sure that this book is intended for people like that anyway. This is perhaps best viewed as a sermon directed at a choir that has become complacent and needs a good stirring-up. Rivers are alive, but they’re under attack. They need our help before it’s too late.

This book was not what I expected when I picked it up. It tells the story of the author’s journey to determine if a river is alive. I was expecting a book filled with river science which was there but not in the quantity I was expecting. Instead of being a book about the life of a river, it was more of a memoir about the people who find life in rivers.

The stories shared in this book were powerful. Scientists who have dedicated their lives to understanding the river ecosystems, advocates who have dedicated their lives to protecting rivers, everyday people who see the beauty and life in the running waters of these ancient rivers. Robert breaks up the retellings with brief interludes of history, destruction, or activism in the area that affects the river. I learned a lot and a few points really stood out to me like the Rights of Nature and later, the possibility that these rights could be abused and manipulated.

*I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

This remarkable book reads like an adventure, with bursts of humor that catch you off guard — and yet it delivers a serious, timely message. Robert Macfarlane explores the idea that rivers are living beings, deserving of recognition and legal protection. He draws a sharp contrast between how corporations are routinely granted personhood, while rivers — which have existed for eons and sustain life — remain unprotected and disregarded.

Macfarlane traces the legal and philosophical history of this idea, weaving together early texts, modern legislation, and the activism that continues to shape them. For many Indigenous communities, this concept isn’t revolutionary — it’s a truth that’s been lived and passed on for generations. As the author notes, even children instinctively grasp animism, only to have it educated out of them. Recognizing the life of rivers, he argues, shouldn’t be a matter of religion or mysticism, but a fundamental acknowledgment of interconnection. We are rivers — our blood vessels flow like tributaries, galaxies merge like currents.

Despite this intuitive understanding, we’re still trapped in systems where poisoning a river is considered good business. And we’re made to believe that valuing water requires academic credentials, when the reality is obvious: no water, no life.

As the climate crisis accelerates, a wave of books has emerged around the subject of water. Is a River Alive? stands out as a powerful, central voice in that conversation — urgent, poetic, and unforgettable.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the advance copy.

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I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

This book is valuable for the fact that it introduces to a wider audience important concepts of non-human, non-sentient personhood and experience. The legal developments around declaring rivers and other natural formations people are hugely significant, and Macfarlane presents a decent overview of the growth of the idea and its implementation around the world.

That said, this is not a very good book. It attempts to meld two different genres, the popular science-society explainer and the creative nonfiction memoir, and the result is awkward, ungainly, and does no favours to the content of either.

Frequently, the memoir sections are interrupted by expository disquisitions from the explainer. Macfarlane/the narrator will conveniently just happen to "remember" some reading and use that flimsy bridge as an excuse to share more information. Even worse, however, sometimes the "characters", the people with whom he is traveling, will provide such exposition as if it's just a natural part of their conversation. At least twice, this infodump is *literally* introduced with the satirically-clichéd phrase "<a href=https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AsYouKnow>as you know</a>, Rob..."

Macfarlane treats these friends and companions very oddly in the narrative. They serve as founts of useful information, but they are also characterized according to some profound griefs and lasting traumas. The intensely private, personal nature of these emotions, including the recent death of one friend's father and the lifelong abuse suffered by another at the hands of his stepfather, stands in unsettling contrast to how very little the narrator shares of Macfarlane's own inner life. The way his own emotions get described is, at best, robotic, and always perfunctory. The narrator exists almost as a *parody* of what feminist philosophy of science described as the "god-trick", the "the view from above, from nowhere, from simplicity" (Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective" [1988]). Macfarlane is not claiming objectivity with that god-trick. He simply is not a strong enough writer not to erase himself in favour of very sad stories about more marginalized people. The effect is, however, similar: recentering the cishet male self as a disembodied and trustworthy observer compared to the kooky and eccentric companions. What's more, characters simply drop out of the narrative as if by magic, without any mention of farewell or leavetaking. I guess they served theair use and were no longer necessary; such blatantly extractive logic sits badly with Macfarlane's overall attempt at empathy and inclusivity.

I'm glad this book exists, I guess, because it talks about very important things. I fear that it will overshadow, even displace, better expressions of the ideas and experiences it presents. Better to read Galeano's "<a href=http://www.ipsnews.net/2008/04/nature-is-not-mute/>Nature is Not Mute</a>" and work by indigenous writers like Robin Wall Kimmerer, whose call for a "grammar of animacy" Macfarlane tortures into some truly cringeworthy attempts at profundity.

This is a shitty, cobbled-together, weirdly-told version of a book that should be splendid, breathtaking and thought-provoking.

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.

This is a beautifully written, contemplative piece that asks a simple yet profound question; can a river be considered alive? True to Macfarlane’s style, the prose is elegant and evocative, weaving together science, indigenous wisdom, and poetic reflection. It’s the kind of book that makes you pause and look at the natural world with a bit more reverence.

That said, while I appreciated the thoughtfulness behind the work, it felt more like a sketch than a finished painting. The ideas are intriguing, but they skim the surface rather than dive deep. I found myself wanting just a bit more—more insight, more grounding, more conversation. Still, it’s a gentle, meditative read that left me with a quiet sense of wonder, and sometimes that’s exactly enough.

This book is so special to me. Is a river alive asks many so questions but the main question is its title. Should something that gives us life be considered alive? The answer is quite obvious but as humans, we have taken away the rights of nature to exist without interference. Rivers need to be tapped to keep us alive but human greed takes things too far as is the case with the Adyar river in Chennai. The author also beautifully invokes the imagery of life and death through the depiction of Olive Ridleys traveling to lay their eggs and how some humans are trying to ensure that these eggs survive. Towards the last 10% of the book, I found the prose to be a bit meandering and self-indulgent but that doesn't take away from the very important points this book makes.