The River Has Roots

The River Has Roots, by Amal El-Mohtar

As a writer, everything about this book makes me jealous. First of El-Mohtar's obvious talent and insight, of course. And second of whatever witchcraft she did to get a book contract that included illustrations! Seriously, this short novella is so so lovely and the illustrations add to the atmosphere.

The story itself is both fairy tale and straight out of the pages of a reddit advice forum: dear reddit, this guy wouldn't stop pestering me because I didn't want to marry him. Now he's engaged to my sister, who doesn't know he's the reason I'm missing. Do I (maybe) give up a chance at true love in order to confront him in front of her? How do I warn her away?

It's a great book and by the end I was sobbing. Not necessarily because this is a book that will make you cry, although it could be depending on your feelings about sisterly bonds and pestering men and endings where even victory does not overcome death, but because it's a great book and I wanted to share it with my friend Nora, who was dear to me, and she's dead.

I suppose it's self-centered to make my review of El-Mohtar's book mostly about how my friend who loved books and who talked about books with me is dead, but she fucking is, and so I can't recommend this book to her. I don't know that she would have liked it. She wasn't a huge fairy-tale fan, but on the other hand she did like weird magic and fantasy stories with strong insight into the flaws in the human soul. But even loving great books doesn't overcome death, I guess. Although it fucking ought to.