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4.41 AVERAGE
4.41 AVERAGE
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Robert Macfarlane’s latest nonfiction exploration is less an answer to the titular question than to the immediate follow up: How would a river’s aliveness reshape our laws and worldviews?
As with all nature writing in an era of looming ecological collapse, there’s an elegiac tone to many of the accounts in this book, but Macfarlane seems more closely concerned with the potential for positive change in the nature rights movement.
As he sets out to expand our imagined possibilities for the legal fictions that are foundational to our social and financial structures, he takes readers with him on three memorable river-based excursions.
Stylistically, Macfarland frequently shifts into poet-mode here. I enjoyed the ride, even if I occasionally bumped on the loftier spiritual digressions and twirlier linguistic eddies.
As with all nature writing in an era of looming ecological collapse, there’s an elegiac tone to many of the accounts in this book, but Macfarlane seems more closely concerned with the potential for positive change in the nature rights movement.
As he sets out to expand our imagined possibilities for the legal fictions that are foundational to our social and financial structures, he takes readers with him on three memorable river-based excursions.
Stylistically, Macfarland frequently shifts into poet-mode here. I enjoyed the ride, even if I occasionally bumped on the loftier spiritual digressions and twirlier linguistic eddies.
adventurous
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
As others have said, this has beautiful prose. It's a little dense, there's so much here. In it, the author visits three rivers, one each in Ecuador, India, and Canada. They correspond, in my view, to hopefulness, despair, and fearful wonder. The fundamental question, "Is the River Alive" is answered in several ways, but the answer is always, yes. In Ecuador, for example, the legislature passed a law giving the river legal status which, to an American (and, I suspect, many others) might sound a bit silly until you consider Citizens United which gave legal status to a corporation, an entity which has much less "life" than any river. Then the river in India which, to all intents and purposes is dead, killed by corporate green and government corruption. And Quebec which is pristine, but for how long?
There's a lot to think about here.
There's a lot to think about here.
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
sad
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced