This book is a delight, both as a tale and physically, a palm-sized treat with gorgeous, subtle decorations flowing through it like the river of its title. El-Mohtar employs wordplay of the most sumptuous variety from page one, in a world where grammar is magic and nature, from trees to storms to the very people, are always more than they appear. “That is the nature of grammar – it is always tense…” A faerytale of delicious tropes, from magic to riddles to metamorphoses, whose narrator doesn’t so much break the fourth wall as knock it down, sweep it aside, and come and sit in your lap in a brief but delightfully deep look at love, sisterhood, and what we would sacrifice for them both.
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar, (List Price: $24.99, Tordotcom, 9781250341082, March 2025)
Reviewed by Doron Klemer, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana