Is a River Alive?
Macfarlane’s touch is deft, giving us exactly enough to consider the question while also showing us how this is not just about rivers but about us ... Macfarlane’s writing is as beautiful as the rivers and the hope he’s describing.
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Perhaps the most moving and beautiful part of his book comes in the interludes between visits to faraway rivers in which Macfarlane tells the history of a small spring near his home ... 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.
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Exhaustive — and at times exhausting ... At once a scholarly treatise and a poetic memoir ... It is the author’s language that takes the biggest leaps. Macfarlane is a lyrical writer, his prose packed with alliteration and imagery, much of it connected to rivers and water. But while the overall effect is hypnotic, at times his metaphors are strained ... For all these missteps, this is a profoundly beautiful and moving work.
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