Audiobook Review: Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane

I've been on a binge, reading everything Robert MacFarlane has written (at least, that I can get from the library), mostly as audio books. This one's just out and I was lucky not to be too far down the queue. 

 

Title: Is a River Alive?

Author: Robert Macfarlane. Read by the author. 

Publication Info: Highbridge Audio, 2025, 11 hours. Hardcover 2025, W.W. Norton, 384 pages.

Source: Library 

Publisher's Blurb:
The renowned nature writer and author of the best-selling author of Underland delivers a revelatory book that transforms how we look at the natural world—and life itself.

Hailed as “a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler” (Holly Morris, New York Times), Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reporting, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyous exploration into an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes readers on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada—imperiled by mining, pollution, and dams. Braiding these journeys is the life story of the fragile chalk stream a mile from Macfarlane’s house, which flows through his own years and days. Powered by Macfarlane’s dazzling prose and lit throughout by other voices, Is a River Alive? will open hearts, challenge perspectives, and remind us that our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has.

My Review:
First up: the audio book is very nicely produced, and Macfarlane is an excellent reader with a very nice voice. His reading added to the experience of the book, for sure (this is my highest praise for an audiobook narrator, one step above invisibility).

Now, for the content. This is a serious book, and the question Macfarlane asks in the title is one he leaves no doubt he answers in the affirmative. If you doubt, consider the number of rivers and waterways we have killed. If a river or lake can be dead, it must once have been alive.

It is hard at times to read of the endangered rivers, some nearly on life-support, but Macfarlane is not a pessimist, though he is a realist. He celebrates the three rivers whose lives he traces in the books, along with the chalk spring near his own home, even as he documents the threats to their continued survival. And all of it is done in his usual thoughtful, thought-provoking, and beautiful prose style. Nor is the book all grim, or even mostly so. There is a sense of humor, as well as of wonder, that runs through Macfarlane's work. At one point, I was listening to an anecdote while driving, and laughing so hard I almost had to pull over.

My Recommendation: 
Read it. If you are already an outdoorsperson and a conservationist, you will appreciate his support of your position. If you are not, this book may give you pause to think. If nothing else, you can enjoy his accounts of the three rivers and the people with whom he explores them.

 

FTC Disclosure: I checked Is a River Alive? out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."  



Rebecca M. Douglass, 2025
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.


Don't miss a post--Follow me!