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Irish Examiner
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Summer catch-up: 20 of the best non-fiction books so far in 2025
1. Pure Gold: Memorable Conversations with Remarkable People by Eamon Carr Eamon Carr, lyricist and drummer with Horslips, amongst other polymathic gifts, has gathered the best celebrity interviews from his years as a journalist. The collection describes how the interviews unfolded with giants from the era like J.P Donleavy, Rudolf Nureyev, Shane MacGowan and Jack Charlton. Written with his wry, entertaining voice, and full anecdote, it's a book to be devoured. 2. Busy and Wrecked: Create Space and Energy for the People and Things That Really Matter by Dermot Whelan Comedian and mindfulness expert Dermot Whelan's follow-up to his best-selling book, Mind Full, is an exploration of modern-day busyness and how to alleviate stress. His conversational tone, weaving in his own personal life and experiences, as well as interesting research, makes for an easy, insightful read. 3. Homework: A Memoir by Geoff Dyer Geoff Dyer's memoir about growing up as an only child in a lower middle-class neighbourhood in provincial England (Cheltenham) in the 1960s (childhood) and '70s (adolescence) might not sound appealing, but in the hands of a writer so smart and so funny, with a brilliant philosophical bent, it's a book you can't put down. 4. The Black Pool: A Memoir of Forgetting by Tim MacGabhann While in university in Dublin, Tim MacGabhann's flatmate's father killed himself at Christmas. In the silence around the news, MacGabhann asked his flatmate how the holidays had been. His flatmate laughed and said, 'Other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?' Thoughts of his own suicide is something the nomadic MacGabhann tackles head on in his brilliant, whirlwind memoir about addiction. 5. Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane In what could be his finest, and certainly his most personal, work to date, the great nature writer Robert Macfarlane examines the fate of our rivers, in particular three rivers in Ecuador, India and Canada, arguing rivers should be treated like humans – or else we're all doomed. Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane; Picnic on Craggy Island: The Surreal Joys of Producing Father Ted by Lissa Evans; and Ballybunion to the River Kwai. 6. Picnic on Craggy Island: The Surreal Joys of Producing Father Ted by Lissa Evans Lissa Evans got a plum job as a producer working on the Father Ted sitcom series in the 1990s. The book she's written recalling her experiences is an enjoyable read, full of yarns about the capers the actors and crew got up to on set, and insight into how the magic happened. 7. Ballybunion to the River Kwai: An Irishman's Story of Survival on the Death by Fergus Kennedy Fergus Kennedy is a retired doctor. He has pieced together his father's remarkable wartime story – he was an Irish prisoner of war in Singapore and Thailand during World War II, including time spent slaving on the notorious 'death railway' through the jungles of Thailand and Burma, which featured in the Hollywood movie Bridge on the River Kwai. 8. Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams The New Zealander Sarah Wynn-Williams landed a dream job at Facebook, but it turned into a nightmare. Her exposé of the work practices at the tech giant, including insight into its founder Mark Zuckerberg, has caused a sensation. 9. Ireland's Curious Places: 100 Fascinating, Lesser-known Treasures to Discover by Michael Fewer Architect and academic Michael Fewer has written about a hundred curious places, with accompanying photos, to tell the story of Ireland – from the church that four-times married Brian Boru prayed at (Co. Clare) to Fionn mac Cumhaill's sliotar (Co. Wicklow) and Art Ó Laoghaire's grave in Kilcrea (Co. Cork). 10. When the Going Was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines by Graydon Carter Graydon Carter is a flamboyant character. His memoir about his years as a magazine editor, including a long spell editing Vanity Fair (1992-2017) is a hoot, not least for details about his on-off relationship with Donald Trump. 11. Notes to John by Joan Didion There have been few better non-fiction writers than Joan Didion. The posthumous publication of notes from her years going to therapy provide a portal into her mind and her close relationships, including with her writer husband John Dunne and their troubled adopted daughter. Notes to John by Joan Didion; Mark Twain by Ron Chernow; and Original Sin: President Biden's Decline. 12. Big Mouth by Vogue Williams Everything Vogue Williams touches seems to turn to gold. Her autobiography delves into the darker moments in her journey, including her parents' marriage breakup when she was five years old, the breakdown of her first marriage with Brian McFadden and other misdemeanours. 13. Mark Twain by Ron Chernow Ron Chernow is a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer. His examination of America's first literary celebrity has caused considerable excitement. He doesn't hold back any punches, exploring how Twain carefully curated his image; his troubling attitude to race; and the dark final chapter of his life when he cultivated relationships with young girls, his 'pets'. 14. The Episode: A True Story of Loss, Madness and Healing by Mary Ann Kenny Shortly after her husband died suddenly, Mary Ann Kenny, an academic who lives in Dublin, descended into a hellhole of psychosis, including a belief that her young children had been harmed by medications she took. The story of how she managed to survive her illness is astonishing. 15. Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson are two experienced journalists on the Washington political scene. Their exposure of Joe Biden's deteriorating health during the final years of his presidency – and bizarrely why he was allowed run for re-election – is a fascinating read. Sports Book Highlights The Big Fight : When Ali Conquered Ireland by Dave Hannigan and Big Dunc by Duncan Ferguson. 1. The Big Fight: When Ali Conquered Ireland by Dave Hannigan: Dave Hannigan's book about Muhammad Ali's fight in Dublin in 1972 has been updated and re-issued in paperback. The co-promoter Butty Sugrue's story is so outrageous it warrants its own book. Not to mention other walk-on characters like Peter O'Toole, John Huston and Bernadette Devlin. A knockout read. 2. Shattered Dreams, Sliding Doors: The Republic of Ireland's 1982 World Cup Qualifying Campaign by Paul Little: The Republic of Ireland had a daunting task to qualify for the 1982 World Cup finals in Spain. In their qualifying group, Eoin Hand's squad faced Belgium, one of eight teams to qualify for the Euro 80 finals; Michel Platini's France; and the Netherlands, beaten finalists in the two previous World Cups. Paul Little, a child at the time, tells the story of what transpired in an engaging, third-person narrative. 3. The Last Ditch: How One GAA Championship Gave a Sportswriter Back His Life by Eamonn Sweeney: Eamonn Sweeney uses the 2024 All-Ireland series in hurling and Gaelic football – which threw up the most exciting hurling final in memory – as a platform for investigating his mental health struggles and the wonder of the GAA in Irish life. 4. Big Dunc: The Upfront Autobiography by Duncan Ferguson: Everton legend Duncan Ferguson's autobiography, which is ghost-written by Henry Winter, is proving very popular with football fans. His story includes three months spent in prison for headbutting an opponent. 5. The Last Bell: Life, Death and Boxing by Donald McRae: Donald McRae is one of the great sportswriters. His book Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing from the mid-1990s is a seminal book about the sweet science. Now, after 50 years immersed in the sport, comes his final book on boxing, and what it has become, mired in doping scandals, enthralled to easy money from Saudi Arabia. Read More Summer books catch-up: 20 of the best novels so far in 2025
Hamilton Spectator
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Toronto Star bestsellers: Robert Macfarlane answers yes to ‘Is a River Alive?' and Robin Wall Kimmerer's ‘Braiding Sweetgrass' returns
Two years ago, British author Robert Macfarlane won the first Writers' Trust Weston International Award , a Canadian prize that honours a non-Canadian non-fiction author for their body of work. Macfarlane was honoured for exploring 'the relationship between humans and nature in new and illuminating ways.' His latest, 'Is a River Alive?' — which entered the original non-fiction list in late May at No. 4 and this week is at No. 3 — is described by Penguin Random House Canada as a 'perspective-shifting book' that answers yes to the question of whether these much abused bodies of water are indeed living things. One of the threatened rivers the book highlights is in northeastern Quebec, where Innu poet Rita Mestokosho is defending the Mutehekau or Magpie River against death by damming; another, in Ecuador, is at risk because of Canadian gold-mining. The book, Penguin says, is ' a literary work of art, a rallying cry and a catalyst for change … that will open hearts, spark debates and challenge perspectives.' Another book that parses the relationship between people and nature, 'Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants' by Indigenous botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer , is back on the original non-fiction list although, since the book has racked up 154 weeks in the rankings, last appearing in mid-April, it never really went away. And Kimmerer's 'The Serviceberry' just passed its 30th week on the same list. Yet another book by an Indigenous author that feels like it never went away returns this week. Bob Joseph 's '21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act' — in which the member of the Gwawaenuk Nation analyzes the shortcomings of the problematic Canadian law that has governed the lives of Indigenous Peoples since 1876 — has been a mainstay of the Canadian non-fiction list since April 2018 and reappears at No. 5 this week. ORIGINAL FICTION 1. Atmosphere , Taylor Jenkins Reid, Doubleday Canada (3)* 2. One Golden Summer , Carley Fortune, Viking (7) 3. My Friends, Fredrik Backman, Simon & Schuster (8) 4. Never Flinch , Stephen King, Scribner (4) 5. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil , V.E. Schwab, Tor (2) 6. The Robin on the Oak Throne , K.A. Linde, Red Tower (1) 7. Problematic Summer Romance , Ali Hazelwood, Berkley (4) 8. Caught Up , Navessa Allen, Zando (2) 9. The Tenant , Freida McFadden, Poisoned Pen (6) 10. Broken Country , Clare Leslie Hall, Simon & Schuster (12) ORIGINAL NON-FICTION 1. Anatomy of a Cover-Up , Paul Palango, Random House Canada (2) 2. The Anxious Generation , Jonathan Haidt, Penguin (51) 3. Is a River Alive? , Robert Macfarlane, Random House Canada (4) 4. 52 Ways to Reconcile , David A. Robertson, McClelland & Stewart (6) 5. A Spy in the Family , Paul Henderson, David Gardiner, HarperCollins Canada (1) 6. Free Ride , Noraly Schoenmaker, Atria (3) 7. One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This, Omar El Akkad, McClelland & Stewart (16) 8. The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Scribner (30) 9. Original Sin , Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson, Penguin (6) 10. Braiding Sweetgrass , Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed (154) CANADIAN FICTION 1. One Golden Summer , Carley Fortune, Viking 2. Every Summer After , Carley Fortune, Viking 3. The Handmaid's Tale , Margaret Atwood, McClelland & Stewart 4. A Most Puzzling Murder , Bianca Marais, Mira 5. Finding Flora , Elinor Florence, Simon & Schuster 6. I Hope You Remember , Josie Balka, Simon & Schuster 7. The Retirement Plan , Sue Hincenbergs, Harper Avenue 8. Whistle , Linwood Barclay, William Morrow 9. The Maid's Secret, Nita Prose, Viking 10. Wild Love , Elsie Silver, Bloom CANADIAN NON-FICTION 1. Value(s), Mark Carney, Signal 2. Anatomy of a Cover-Up , Paul Palango, Random House Canada 3. 52 Ways to Reconcile , David A. Robertson, McClelland & Stewart 4. One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This, Omar El Akkad, McClelland & Stewart 5. 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act , Bob Joseph, Indigenous Relations 6. The Mind Mappers , Eric Andrew-Gee, Random House Canada 7. Ally Is a Verb , Rose LeMay, Page Two 8. A History of Canada in Ten Maps , Adam Shoalts, Penguin Canada 9. Apple in China , Patrick McGee, Scribner 10. Outsider , Brett Popplewell, HarperCollins Canada CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULT 1. Oh, the Places You'll Go!, Dr. Seuss, Random House Books for Young Readers 2. Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins, Scholastic 3. Karen's Ghost (Baby-Sitters Little Sister #11) , D.K. Yingst, Ann M. Martin, Graphix 4. Binding 13 , Chloe Walsh, Bloom 5. Love You Forever , Robert Munsch, Sheila McGraw, Firefly 6. Big Jim Begins (Dog Man #13), Dav Pilkey, Graphix 7. The Very Hungry Caterpillar , Eric Carle, Penguin Young Readers 8. Fearless, Lauren Roberts, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers 9. Warriors Graphic Novel (The Prophecies Begin #2), Erin Hunter, Natalie Riess, Sara Goetter, HarperAlley 10. Powerless , Lauren Roberts, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers SELF-IMPROVEMENT 1. The Let Them Theory , Mel Robbins, Sawyer Robbins, Hay House 2. The 48 Laws of Power , Robert Greene, Joost Elffers, Penguin 3. The High 5 Habit , Mel Robbins, Hay House 4. The Mountain Is You , Brianna Wiest, Thought Catalog 5. Big Freakin' Change , Cara Moeller Poppitt, Page Two 6. The Body Keeps the Score , Bessel van der Kolk, Penguin 7. We Can Do Hard Things , Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, Amanda Doyle, Dial Press 8. 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think , Brianna Wiest, Thought Catalog 9. The Courage to Be Disliked , Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga, Simon & Schuster 10. The Four Agreements , Don Miguel Ruiz, Janet Mills, Tarcher * Weeks on list The bestseller lists are compiled by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited from information provided by BookNet Canada's national sales tracking service, BNC SalesData.
Scotsman
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Edinburgh International Book Festival: Non-fiction Highlights
The theme of repair is explored from many different angles in the non-fiction strand of this year's EIBF, writes Susan Mansfield Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... A broad, deep river of fascinating non-fiction runs through the Book Festival programme from day to day, which seems an appropriate metaphor because one of the highly anticipated visitors is Robert Macfarlane, with his new book, Is A River Alive? (9 August). In addition to this solo event, he will join Louise Welsh, who has campaigned for the Clyde to be granted personhood, and barrister Monica Feria-Tinta, to talk about how seeing landscape differently might help to preserve it (10 August). Robert Macfarlane PIC: William Waterworth These events are part of the strand of the programme responding to the theme of repair, which is explored from many angles. William Dalrymple and his fellow podcaster Anita Anand look at looted artefacts, the journeys they have taken and the possibilities of repatriation (13 August). Philippe Sands QC talks about working on the prosecution of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet (10, 11 August). Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Naga Munchetty calls out at misogyny in the health service, and the struggles women face accessing treatment (23 August), Poppy Oktcha and Kathy Slack explore the reparative powers of gardening (10 August) and Hanif Kureishi tells a very personal story of repair following the catastrophic fall which left him paralysed (15 August). Hanif Kureshi He is just one of a rich crop of writers bringing their memoirs to the Book Festival. Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will unveil her hotly anticipated book (14 August), and fellow politicians Diane Abbott (21 August) and Chris Bryant (20 August) lift the veil on Westminster and their own lives. Veteran activist, journalist and filmmaker Tariq Ali talks about his memoir, You Can't Please All (13 August), tracing some of the key moments in recent history which he has witnessed in his 81 years. Yulia Navalnaya visits the festival to speak about her late husband Alexei Navalny, Russia's opposition leader, whose prison memoir was published after his death in a Russian jail in 2024 (22 August). Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Yulia Navalnaya Leading Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov details the experience of living in a country at war in his memoir, Our Daily War (19 August), and leading Chinese-American novelist Yiyun Li brings a grief memoir like no other, a book in which she processes the suicides of her two teenage sons (10 August). The festival offers many opportunities to pick up insights on world events. Pulitzer-winning journalist Anne Applebaum joins Edward Wong, diplomatic correspondent of the New York Times, to discuss reporting from the frontline of Donald Trump's second term (17 August). Leading commentator on race, Ta-Nehisi Coates, talks about his new book, The Message, which explores race relations around the world and questions the messages we tell ourselves (16 August). Closer to home, former First Minister of Scotland Henry McLeish and James Mitchell, director of the Academy of Government at the University of Edinburgh, reflect on the years since devolution, the achievements and challenges (18 August), and Alistair Moffat presents his new book, To See Ourselves: A Personal History of Scotland since 1950, rich with personal recollections (19 August).
Globe and Mail
09-06-2025
- General
- Globe and Mail
Robert Macfarlane's new book asks a question he couldn't ignore: Is a river alive?
When I mention to Robert Macfarlane that I live next to a buried river – Garrison Creek, which runs unseen, but is frequently smelled, through Toronto's west end – his eyes visibly brighten. He leans closer to his computer screen. 'Are they going to daylight it?' Click on the blue underlined text for photos, audio and text annotations He's referring to the practice – executed with socially transformative results in cities such as Seoul, Seattle, Singapore and Munich – of exhuming such 'ghost rivers' from their concrete tombs. I tell him that the idea has been proposed by local and environmental groups, but has yet to gain real traction. 'It's such a powerful metaphor, isn't it?' he says. 'But daylighting is also a literal act: returning a river to the sun. A river we cannot see or hear or name becomes a river that is redundant to the imagination and resource to the system only.' Robert Macfarlane near the River Cam which flows through Cambridge, England, where he lives. Tom Oliver Lucas /The Globe and Mail Macfarlane, 48, speaks almost as lyrically as he writes. Over the past two decades, the Cambridge professor of literature and environmental humanities has emerged as one of the world's pre-eminent nature writers – an inheritor of the mantle of authors such as Edward Thomas, Richard Jefferies, Annie Dillard and Barry Lopez (a friend of Macfarlane's until his death in 2020). Macfarlane approaches his subjects with the soul of the logophilic poet he once aspired to be (a body of water is described as having 'lacustrine calm') and an unerring eye for great narratives. He's covered much of the world's topography in award-winning books such as Mountains of the Mind (mountains), The Wild Places and The Old Ways (pathways), and Underland (subterranean landscapes). His book Landmarks, meanwhile, was a celebration of the often endangered words people have used to describe the natural world. So turning to rivers, as he has done in his latest book, bears a certain logic. But while Is a River Alive? aligns stylistically with Macfarlane's previous work – overflowing (all water metaphors to be forgiven in advance), as it is, with gorgeous, vivid prose – it is far more political than its predecessors. 'Across 10 previous books and more than 20 years of writing,' he writes in the introduction, 'I have never before known a subject with the urgency of this one.' Although he didn't write while he was on the river, Macfarlane filled his notebooks with his impressions of what he saw and experienced when he came ashore. Tom Oliver Lucas /The Globe and Mail He didn't originally plan to write about rivers per se; he was interested, rather, in what we mean by 'life.' He began by jotting down three questions: Can a forest think? Does a mountain remember? And is a river alive? 'They were all good questions to spend time with, but it was that third one that just plucked at my sleeve and wouldn't let me go.' This was in 2020, just a few years after the Rights of Nature movement was given a major boost by the granting of legal personhood to New Zealand's Whanganui River after sustained pressure from Maori campaigners. What's your favourite river in the world? Share your story with The Globe At the same time, rivers in England, Macfarlane's home country, were facing a deepening crisis. Overwhelmed and instrumentalized into invisibility and incapacity, the majority were effectively dead. And the problem, Macfarlane soon realized, was global in scope. 'That's where it felt like a writer could step into the space and begin to tackle the stories we tell about rivers and the ways we imagine them.' That writer, clearly, would have to be him. His research for Is a River Alive? took Macfarlane to three places where local river protectors have used imaginative techniques to cope with existential threats: mining, in the case of Ecuador's Los Cedros River; industrial pollution, for the rivers and estuaries of Chennai, India; and megadamming for the Mutehekau Shipu, also known as the Magpie River, which runs through Innu territory in northeastern Quebec. In 2023, Macfarlane travelled to eastern Quebec in order to follow the course of a river known in English as the Magpie, and in Innu as (among other names) the Mutehekau Shipu. Robert Macfarlane/Supplied The book also takes us to the psychic and intellectual spaces where Macfarlane ventured as he attempted to answer the question in the book's title. While he came out on the pro-rivers-are-alive side (he uses the pronoun 'who' when referring to rivers), he readily acknowledges how difficult and counterintuitive the concept can be for those, like himself, raised on rationalism (his parents and brother are doctors). Conferring rivers with personhood, he writes, isn't the same as anthropomorphism. 'To call a river alive is not to personify a river, but instead further to deepen and widen the category of 'life', and in so doing – how had George Eliot put it? – 'enlarge the imagined range for self to move in.'' Those who still find the notion a tad flaky might consider the fact that corporate personhood has been naturalized in many countries for years. The idea reached its most extreme form in the U.S. after the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, but even in Canada, corporations have many of the same Charter rights as human Canadians, including freedom of expression. In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to give nature formal rights in its constitution. Robert Macfarlane/Supplied Macfarlane approached each of his planned three river journeys differently, and with different companions. In Ecuador, he hikes and clambers through one of the most biodiverse regions of the world, the high cloud forest around the Rio Los Cedros, in search of the river's source. With him are a mycologist, an environmental-rights lawyer and a musician. In Chennai, he gets a tour of the city's toxic, sludgy rivers – victims of the area's unregulated heavy and chemical industries – by a young, self-taught naturalist who, along with a small group of fellow activists, is taking brave steps toward their resurrection. (The 2017 granting of legal personhood to the Ganga and Yamuna rivers, theologically considered deities, was inspired by New Zealand's Whanganui River ruling.) Amid the depressing carnage are moments of wonder. In a lake sanctuary reeking of nail polish, Macfarlane sees what he calls an 'avian Venice' – a floating city of birds. Where Chennai's rivers meet the Indian Ocean, he helps a local patrol move sea-turtle eggs to a place where hatchlings are less likely to get confused by the city's bright lights during their seaward scramble. After a patrol moves the nest from a polluted river, a baby sea turtle makes its way to the Indian ocean. Robert Macfarlane/Supplied The book's transcendent third section describes the 160-kilometre kayak trip Macfarlane took down the lower Mutehekau Shipu toward the Gulf of St. Lawrence. This time his entourage consists of his polymathic eccentric friend, Wayne, two francophone backcountry guides, Raph and Danny, and a local fisherman named Ilya. Here, Macfarlane's writing takes on a flow and intensity verging on the spiritual. (He isn't religious, but has admitted to falling back on the language of religion when trying to capture nature's sublimity). A thrilling, harrowing account of his journey down the river's rapids is told, appropriately enough, in what amounts to full stream-of-consciousness. 'I am still very far from being able to take that in, let alone comprehend it. I think perhaps I will always be coming to terms with it,' Macfarlane writes of his experience in Quebec. I ask him to expand on those cryptic lines. 'Words were just pouring through me. It was very, very strange and powerful and for a writer to feel that they were being written by a force utterly alien to them was perplexing and thrilling.' Before embarking on that final trip, Macfarlane had consulted with Governor-General's Award-winning Innu poet and activist Rita Mestokosho, who'd been instrumental in having the Mutehekau Shipu declared, in February, 2021, 'a person with a right to live' – the first river in Canada to be so recognized. After offering guidance for his river journey, she'd tied a bracelet of red cloth around Macfarlane's wrist. 'The other bracelet you must leave on your wrist. Only time or the river, which are the same things, can remove it,' said Rita Mestokosho. Macfarlane still has the red thread bracelet. Tom Oliver Lucas /The Globe and Mail When I ask if he still has it, he pulls back his sleeve. 'It's here, over my pulse, next to the only tattoo I have, and will ever have': the cuneiform symbols for river from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Literature's oldest written story means a lot to Macfarlane. He's studied it in multiple translations, made an album based on it with musician Johnny Flynn and is currently working on a graphic novelization of it. At the heart of Gilgamesh is a sacred cedar forest that gets destroyed by extractive interests, so when Macfarlane realized that the Ecuadorian cloud forest he'd be travelling to, Los Cedros, literally translated to 'the cedar forest,' he got chills. It's testament to the impact writing the book has had on him that Macfarlane has gotten involved with several related causes (in addition to the many he's already involved with). He joined the board of the Los Cedros Fund and continues to follow the fate of the Mutehekau Shipu – which could yet be dammed – through Mestokosho, with whom he has developed a close friendship. Is a River Alive? also inspired three 'water-songs,' one of which, he says, will be sung at springs and rivers at risk. Macfarlane was drawn to the Mutehekau after it became the first Canadian river to be recognized as a 'legal person' in 2021. Robert Macfarlane/Supplied 'I began these river-journeys in doubt and uncertainty,' Macfarlane writes. So in what frame of mind, I ask, did he end them? 'I ended unsure of what I'd seen and sensed, unsure of what power would make of such ideas, which are at once the strongest forces that we can muster and profoundly vulnerable to the sharp teeth and heavy blows of power.' He pauses. 'I couldn't have known that I would be publishing this book into a British context in which our rivers are all dying, and a North American context in which the war on life is accelerating to calamity pace. In which clean air and water regulations are being rolled back with greater speed and scale than by any administration before. 'And so the ideas at the heart of the book – of life as a web of relations, of the ancient compact of life that flows between humans and freshwater – feel at once more fragile and more crucial than at any point in my life. I don't mean that in a grandiose sense: that the book has some great conversional power to it. I mean that although the ideas and the places and the rivers I've spent time with have been ancient on the one hand, they have felt very urgent on the other. As a writer, that feels like the right place to be.'
Globe and Mail
07-06-2025
- Globe and Mail
What's your favourite river in the world? Share your story with The Globe
Is a river a living thing? In his latest book, author Robert Macfarlane sought to find the answer to this question. After hiking with experts and locals to three rivers, he concluded that rivers were, in fact, alive, and deserving of the same protections as a person. Agree with him or not, it's no question that the rivers that run through – or under – our homes, communities or favourite vacation destinations around the world are vital to their landscapes. The Globe wants to know: What is your favourite river in the world? Which river holds the most memories for you? It could be one that runs through your community, one you kayaked for days on a camping trip or one that took your breath away on a vacation far from home. Share your thoughts in the form below. Share your favourite river and why it has such an impact on you in the form below. If you'd like to send a photo alongside your submission, send us an e-mail at audience@
