One of the literary events of this year, at least in environmental writing, will be the publication of Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive? (Hamish Hamilton/ Penguin books)

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If I’m totally honest, I approached buying and reading this book with some apprehension. I didn’t rush out and get it at first (not for a whole week!) as I wondered whether I would love it as much as I love the Cambridge scholar's other work. I didn’t read many previews or reviews. That’s what happens sometimes when you loved the last book.

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As the editor of Black Bough poetry, I spent a year editing two anthologies Deep Time 1 and 2, inspired by the epic, subterranean journeys described in Underland (2019) and this work is my favourite piece of nature writing, eclipsing Roger Deakin’s Waterlog and Wildwood and works by Jim Perrin and Barry Lopez (sometimes, I think I prefer Macfarlane’s Mountains of the Mind over Underland and then I change my mind). Underland, with its 15 or so sections depicting different journeys over 452 pages, is a masterpiece of a poetic travelogue encompassing dangerous, claustrophobic routes underground, deep introspection, fears over the climate crisis and explorations of myths and rituals of the past.

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Is a River Alive? runs at a still-weighty 302 pages, and is arguably a really tough act to follow after Underland, a bit like a football team winning the triple one year and facing crushing expectations (note: Macfarlane has published work between these two significant studies).

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If you’re expecting Underland mark 2, you’re going to be surprised. Is a River Alive? is a very different work in its structure and is a paradigm-shift in many ways, despite the familiar stamp of Robert Macfarlane’s writing style. It is far more political, on the whole less poetic-mythical, reflecting the writer’s increasing focus on activism in recent years, whether this is in regards to genocide, the heavy pollution of rivers or unnecessary tree felling in cities. There are more human characters, an array of eccentric, extremely harmless people obsessed with tree sounds and mycelium and snake wrangling and there's a lot more dialogue through the book. Macfarlane's children make numerous appearances (my kids would literally run out of the book) and we get treated to lyrics by his folk musician friend Johnny Flynn. Why not? It's his book, for chrissake.

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The work takes us to four main locations – a mountainous region of Ecuador that was at risk of heavy mining, a heavily polluted region in India, a tribal land in Nitassinan/ Canada damaged by hydroelectric projects, and the author’s local landscape in Cambridgeshire, which is affected by seasonal drought and development. The scope, in terms of number of areas studied, has narrowed, and there is, instead. an extended treatment of each of these areas.

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This was surprising, for me at least. I was expecting discussion of polluted water and sewage in English rivers, as seen on Macfarlane's social media. National issues are mentioned reasonably briefly with activists, such as Feargal Sharkey, getting a name check. This book is not, however, centred on the river sewage crisis in Britain as might be expected. Instead, we are presented with a series of landscapes and rivers from other countries to show what can happen when sustainable development is utterly compromised, environments are destroyed and rivers, that are such a vital source of life, die.

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The most interesting, and refreshing part of this work, for me, is its awareness of animism – how as human beings we invest human qualities in rivers and other natural forms and how this can be limiting, directed by our imaginative faculties. I fist pumped this because of my own frustrations with nature writing. Often, I feel nature and eco-writing cannot escape the confines of human thought and language - and that their otherness is never adequately addressed, even attempted. Nature can become domesticated, overly-humanised, as if it is there to serve the creative whims of the human onlooker. Macfarlane's book does not struggle with this problem but does explore and play around with metaphors, recognizing this as a human trait and, always, subjective activity. That self awareness is intrinsic to this writer.​ So Macfarlane resists, or is at least highly aware of, gendering or humanizing rivers (remember Keir Starmer's memorable recent description of a country as being 'she'. By the way, who else flinches when people refer to a boat as 'she'? Please no!)

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The work also explores how we can have a narrow view of what it means to actually be ‘alive’. So, this is not just a book about science, ecology, environmental exploitation and ruin but is focuses on the power of language in how it shapes our interpretation of nature, our sense of reality and our notion of what 'living' means; furthermore, how it shapes laws that can eventually protect nature. 

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At times, my rationalism took over and I thought, hang-on, rivers are, at their most basic, H20. They contain and carry life (i.e. organisms) but they do not actually live. They are a liquid state - but, as mentioned, this work suggests this notion of what it means to ‘live’ is very narrow and there are suggestions that rivers do have some kind of agency. This remains a lingering mystery in the book with no deterministic conclusion.

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Macfarlane is highly aware, then, of the human, animist tendency and recognises its potential in ensuring that rivers, like humans, have rights. For some cultures, animism is deeply rooted in myth, folklore and different religions but pragmatically it serves an important legal purpose in protection and he gives various amazing examples of tribes and communities who have beat corporation and government power. If a river (or a forest) is seen in almost-human terms, this can result in its conservation and survival. The work, therefore, shows us the potential for elevating the status of rivers in all cultures, not least the potential for this in the UK.

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There’s a restless churning of ideas through this frequently evocative work. There’s always an appealing earnestness to Macfarlane’s writing, an idealism at work that is infectious with the reader and encourages hope, bewilderment and plenty of daydreaming but the narrative doesn’t ever cloy, or get too sentimental. When a tribal writer tells Macfarlane to put down his fieldnotes so he can just experience the wild, this was an endearing touch, showing how writers themselves can consume or use nature and should have primary experience unhindered by their vocation or ambitions. I also appreciated random references to Star Wars and other aspects of popular culture and the occasional bit of silliness to give the book some lightness and boot neoromanticism into touch.

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If a second edition were to be possible in the future, I would love to see an increased focus on British rivers. I can see why it would be a sensible choice to avoid too much of a focus on the UK because the issue of high levels of sewage in rivers is relatively recent and activism and awareness still on the rise with water companies largely unchallenged. Macfarlane has also covered British rivers in his previous books. Nevertheless, perhaps something for the future paperback release?

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This is, of course, a brilliant work that shows sustained attention to language and is fiercely intellectual without the posturing of some other prominent nature writers. We've all read works where the egoist nature writer strides out in tweed and muddy boots elbowing everyone out the way to flex their vocabulary and superior knowledge, waxing lyrical about wrens or kingfishers, or snow-capped peaks, banging out all the cliches we've ever heard. Not here, thank god. I appreciated the endnotes and references to other texts. This, again, is honest work, when some nature writers want to pretend the ideas presented are almost entirely their own.

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There are numerous passages in Is a River Alive? which go beyond the power of a cascade to the fury of the rapid, not least * that * ending, which is devastating in its power. I finished the book in a day and was sad to finish it, a book that is a page-turner.

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Congratulations Robert Macfarlane and best wishes as you travel out there and share this important work. 

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~ Dr Matthew M C Smith is the author of The Keeper of Aeons and 'Paviland: Ice and Fire' and the editor of Black Bough poetry