Is a River Alive? highlights the global ‘Rights of Nature’ Movement.  It follows Robert Macfarlane as he journeys through Ecuador’s cloud-forests, India’s embattled waterways, and Canada’s wild Magpie River.

Our group split into two parts on Is a River Alive?  Although we all liked the underlying message and the poetic language, a couple of us found the descriptions too dense due to his use of so many adjectives.

However most of us loved the book with its beautiful intense poetic writing and the wonderful descriptions that made us feel we were there.  MacFarlane emphasises the tragedy of large corporates destroying the planet and the amazing courage of the characters trying to stop them.

We enjoyed the smaller sections relating to MacFarlane and his family in Cambridge and felt he was a clever and inspirational writer.

The group found many power powerful phrases, quotable lines both alliterative and onomatopoeic, which made us think. QUOTE: "nothing is good in and of itself, everything must be good for something"

Group Review:  With scores ranging from 10 to 5, the average score for this novel was 8.2/10