Review of The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

Every so often I read a story that reminds me why I love stories and why I love reading in particular. Film and television are great—I watch a lot of both—yet there’s something about the collaboration of imagination between writer and reader that makes a book absolutely magical for its ability to transport the reader elsewhere. I read the eARC of The River Has Roots curled up on my couch on a Sunday afternoon, curled up on my couch under a blanket. It’s not a long novella. Yet I was present for every moment of it, and when it was finished, I immediately emailed my local bookshop to preorder a hardcover edition—I hear it has fancy illustrations! Amal El-Mohtar has written something exquisitely beautiful here, and I won’t stop singing its praises.

At its heart, The River Has Roots is a faerie tale, a cautionary tale. It’s a feminist one, for it is not only a cautionary tale about the vicious avarice of men but also about how sisterhood and solidarity can stand up against patriarchal pressures to conform. It’s a story steeped in story, succumbing to sadness only to lift us up back into grace and, ultimately, hope.

I’m not usually one for extensive exposition at the beginning, yet I didn’t even mind it here. The narrator’s introductions to Esther and Ysabel, to Thistleford and the Professors, to the very concept of Faerie and the eponymous river that wends its way through title and book alike … as I said above, El-Mohtar’s descriptions captivated me and transported me to this place. I love how the actual setting is incredibly ambiguous: it’s vaguely English, of course, but not in any identifiable way, and in this way it remains true to the powerful ambiguity of faerie tales.

What’s unambiguous is the love between Esther and Ysabel, which is the driving force of the entire novella. The way Esther transcends what she experiences purely because of her love for her sister is beautiful. El-Mohtar reminds us that sometimes bad things happen to people who don’t deserve it—and sometimes we bear costs we ourselves did not incur. Yet at the end of the day, we always have choices. Ours is not to control completely our fates but rather to make the most of what we are given, and Esther displays that admirably here. She takes her turn of tragedy and instead of turning inwards or despairing instead resolves only to go on as she did before: by loving Ysabel and staying true to her promise.

The anxiety between the sisters really hit me. I could see myself in both Esther and Ysabel. I have been the one who clings on to a friend, demanding we’ll be together forever, even though they can’t possibly promise me that. I have been the one who finds myself discovering new levels to my life, never quite outgrowing or abandoning those around me yet certainly … changing the way I relate to them. In traditional faerie tales, the characters are archetypes, and it is their static nature that makes them suitable vessels. Despite this story’s short length, El-Mohtar allows the Hawthorn sisters to change and learn, and it ultimately deepens the bond between them.

In contrast, the romance between Esther and Rin feels like a perfunctory item at best, but as an aromantic person that’s how all romance feels for me. I’m actually grateful that romance takes a secondary role to sisterhood and friendship in this story. Indeed, Esther and Rin’s entire attraction is so unconventional and removed from the physical and the material, and I appreciate that so much. Whether or not El-Mohtar had these considerations in mind when writing, what she’s done here is tell a love story that doesn’t make me, as an aroace person, feel erased or unimportant. I might not express my affection for someone in the same way Rin does for Esther; however, I can identify with the intense significance they place on Esther’s existence. I can project my own feelings of love on Rin and Esther’s love in a way seldom available to me in more conventional stories, and this was an unexpected and beautiful bonus.

Likewise, I was surprised by my visceral reaction to Samuel’s sudden and explosive violence against a woman who dares defy him. I don’t know if it’s the setting or whatnot but it reminded me of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. We are so desensitized to violence against women that even though I saw his actions coming, I was still shocked by the cold and calculating brutality of it. And of course as the river changes course and takes Esther on to her next chapter, as Rin searches for her madly and finds her only to realize they have to let her make an impossible choice … I found myself crying. Crying for Esther, but more broadly, for what men so often do to women, and the choices they force us into making.

As the title implies, connection to the land is also an incredibly important theme herein. It’s the land and water that save Esther. The magic of the land, singing to the land, is what sustains the Professors and blesses Thistleford. Samuel is a villain not just for his misogyny but for his settler-colonial attitude towards the land, viewing it only as something to be tamed and parcelled up and bought and sold and divided again for profit. He is everything the traditional European folktales championed, and El-Mohtar subverts that here cleverly and creatively.

It’s all these threads that make The River Has Roots so beautiful. The way El-Mohtar embraces the aesthetics of European folklore while breaking out of its tropes in favour of a cornucopia of postcolonial and feminist ideas from across different cultures. The playfulness of the prose. The promises built into each page, finally delivered at the climax and into the conclusion. The openness and fluidity of this narrative, its characters, its ideas.

I really hesitate to throw around words like “perfect” in my reviews. It feels hyperbolic and suggests a kind of absolute kind of reception that no story can hope to achieve. All literature has flaws or readers it won’t reach, and that is OK.

But … damn. The River Has Roots is as close to perfect a story as I think I have read in a long while. It’s easily in the running for one of the best stories I’ll read in 2025, and we aren’t even a quarter into the year! If anything I have said in this review resonates remotely with you, then do yourself a favour and run—don’t walk—to a copy of this in your library or local bookshop. It is sublime and beautiful, and it might destroy you, but it will restore you as well.