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Mother Mary Comes to Me
A raw and deeply moving memoir from the legendary author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness that traces the complex relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, a fierce and formidable force who shaped Arundhati’s life both as a woman and a writer.
Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, is a soaring account, both intimate and inspirational, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as “my shelter and my storm.”
“Heart-smashed” by her mother Mary’s death in September 2022 yet puzzled and “more than a little ashamed” by the intensity of her response, Roy began to write, to make sense of her feelings about the mother she ran from at age eighteen, “not because I didn’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her.” And so begins this astonishing, sometimes disturbing, and surprisingly funny memoir of the author’s journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to the writing of her prizewinning novels and essays, through today.
With the scale, sweep, and depth of her novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the passion, political clarity, and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace—a memoir like no other.
Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, is a soaring account, both intimate and inspirational, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as “my shelter and my storm.”
“Heart-smashed” by her mother Mary’s death in September 2022 yet puzzled and “more than a little ashamed” by the intensity of her response, Roy began to write, to make sense of her feelings about the mother she ran from at age eighteen, “not because I didn’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her.” And so begins this astonishing, sometimes disturbing, and surprisingly funny memoir of the author’s journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to the writing of her prizewinning novels and essays, through today.
With the scale, sweep, and depth of her novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the passion, political clarity, and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace—a memoir like no other.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published September 2, 2025
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21147 people want to read
About the author
Arundhati Roy
100 books13k followersArundhati Roy is an Indian writer who is also an activist who focuses on issues related to social justice and economic inequality. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and has also written two screenplays and several collections of essays.
For her work as an activist she received the Cultural Freedom Prize awarded by the Lannan Foundation in 2002.
For her work as an activist she received the Cultural Freedom Prize awarded by the Lannan Foundation in 2002.
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August 6, 2025when i conquer the world, every author i like will have to write a memoir
April 25, 2025
The Booker Prize held no meaning for me before I read Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things; I came to understand it as a marker of extraordinariness because that extraordinary novel had won it. To this day, I measure my liking for Booker-awarded works by whether or not they hold up to the experience of reading about Estha, Rahel, and Pappachi's Moth – very few ever do.
Roy is known today not just for the brilliance of her fiction – screenplays like In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones and Electric Moon which preceded The God of Small Things, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness , which followed a decade after – but also her commitment to left-wing political activism and the powerful, prescient – almost clairvoyant – non-fiction borne from it. Now, in this first work of memoir, she takes us through the story of how she became the writer, activist, and person she is, shaped a little by circumstance and a lot by her complex relationship with her mercurial mother.
Though not as well-known as her daughter, Mary Roy was too a remarkable woman: a formidable feminist and an inspiring educator who transformed many lives in Kerala. However, she too was not without her flaws. Mother Mary Comes to Me reveals the fullness, trouble and tumult, of her legacy through the eyes of her 'valiant organ-child'. As it follows the separate but interminally linked journeys of the two women, Mary and Arundhati, it shapes up into an unflinching, honest portrait of the complexity and irreducability of human relationships – of love.
Roy's writing here is beautiful and passionate, threaded through with characteristic humour and political clarity, and an uncharacteristic sense of candour. Long-time fans will delight as much in learning more about the author's unconventional and hitherto closely-guarded private life as in the manifold insights this book provides into the process and passage through which all her works – including Walking with the Comrades, her commanding account of a year spent among Naxalite (Maoist) guerrillas deep within the forests of rural Chattisgarh – have come about. New readers will find themselves taken by her lucid brilliance and her lived philosophy of language, the world, the writing life and beyond.
A must read.
Roy is known today not just for the brilliance of her fiction – screenplays like In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones and Electric Moon which preceded The God of Small Things, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness , which followed a decade after – but also her commitment to left-wing political activism and the powerful, prescient – almost clairvoyant – non-fiction borne from it. Now, in this first work of memoir, she takes us through the story of how she became the writer, activist, and person she is, shaped a little by circumstance and a lot by her complex relationship with her mercurial mother.
Though not as well-known as her daughter, Mary Roy was too a remarkable woman: a formidable feminist and an inspiring educator who transformed many lives in Kerala. However, she too was not without her flaws. Mother Mary Comes to Me reveals the fullness, trouble and tumult, of her legacy through the eyes of her 'valiant organ-child'. As it follows the separate but interminally linked journeys of the two women, Mary and Arundhati, it shapes up into an unflinching, honest portrait of the complexity and irreducability of human relationships – of love.
Roy's writing here is beautiful and passionate, threaded through with characteristic humour and political clarity, and an uncharacteristic sense of candour. Long-time fans will delight as much in learning more about the author's unconventional and hitherto closely-guarded private life as in the manifold insights this book provides into the process and passage through which all her works – including Walking with the Comrades, her commanding account of a year spent among Naxalite (Maoist) guerrillas deep within the forests of rural Chattisgarh – have come about. New readers will find themselves taken by her lucid brilliance and her lived philosophy of language, the world, the writing life and beyond.
A must read.
August 26, 2025
Roy writes that she is puzzled and more than a little ashamed by the intensity of her response to her mother’s death and I now have this same feeling about my reaction to this book 😭
September 1, 2025
The new memoir from Arundhati Roy about her life and how it was shaped by her tumultuous relationship with her mother, Mary Roy. This book is objectively well written — the prose are gorgeous, the structure is clear, and Roy has lived a powerful life as an artist and activist. And yet, I am so out on memoir this year I read it and thought “this is a good book, moving on”. I liked it enough to finish it, which I can’t say for many memoirs I’ve started this year, but it didn’t land the emotional punch I think it will for other readers. I am convinced we are at the end stages of memoir as a genre, because honestly if Arundhati Roy’s beautiful writing didn’t make me want to dive back into that world, what will?
September 8, 2025
Arundhati Roy is savage. But so was her mother. When I was done reading the book, it unsettled me that an activist as fierce as Arundhati often shrank before her mother’s ridicule. The rebel in me sighed in relief when she finally snapped back and broke a chair in response to one of Mary Roy’s outrageous demands. But by then she had already slipped into a senile cognitive decline.
The God of Small Things was one book that had left me nostalgic for parts of Kerala I barely knew, and when in Mother Mary Comes To Me, Arundhati Roy describes how everything including electric poles is smothered with plants and creepers I was easing into loving the beauty that greenery gives Kerala. But was reminded with a jolt that toxicity too thrives in that lush. I could absolutely relate when she wrote of Delhi as her liberation from a life she shudders to think of.
At its heart, the memoir is about a daughter’s unconditional love, reverence and adoration for her brilliant but cruel mother. However, much of the book actually explores personal anecdotes, mother daughter dynamics, life of children in her mother's school, political injustices in Kashmir, Naxalism in Jharkhand, the whirlwind success of The God of Small Things, the back stories of her published work, the wave of political changes in India in the 90s...blending the trivial and the profound.
The result is a beautiful account that unsettles as much as it moves. I think Mother Mary Comes To Me is a memoir that is deeply personal, politically insightful and a stylistically unforgettable smooth read that felt like cutting into a layered cheesecake. Yum!
The God of Small Things was one book that had left me nostalgic for parts of Kerala I barely knew, and when in Mother Mary Comes To Me, Arundhati Roy describes how everything including electric poles is smothered with plants and creepers I was easing into loving the beauty that greenery gives Kerala. But was reminded with a jolt that toxicity too thrives in that lush. I could absolutely relate when she wrote of Delhi as her liberation from a life she shudders to think of.
At its heart, the memoir is about a daughter’s unconditional love, reverence and adoration for her brilliant but cruel mother. However, much of the book actually explores personal anecdotes, mother daughter dynamics, life of children in her mother's school, political injustices in Kashmir, Naxalism in Jharkhand, the whirlwind success of The God of Small Things, the back stories of her published work, the wave of political changes in India in the 90s...blending the trivial and the profound.
The result is a beautiful account that unsettles as much as it moves. I think Mother Mary Comes To Me is a memoir that is deeply personal, politically insightful and a stylistically unforgettable smooth read that felt like cutting into a layered cheesecake. Yum!
July 12, 2025
I find myself in a somewhat unique position. I just finished Arundhati Roy’s breathtaking (that is, reading it took my breath away!) memoir, and yet I have not read anything she has previously written and published. My usual linearity-seeking compulsion is to read some, or all, books by an author, and then read a memoir or a solid, scholarly biography. I like to know what was going on in the author’s life when he or she wrote a particular book. Despite having turned my usual model upside-down by reading Ms. Roy’s memoir before any other of her works, my inclination to read everything she has written is still irresistibly strong.
Roy’s prose in the memoir is terse and unsentimental, written almost with brutal journalistic brevity. For readers, this means a fast pace, but without any danger of a stumble as it becomes a compulsive page-turner. The mother-daughter interactions don’t seem to happen often, but that could be the pace at which events move.
If nothing else, Mary Roy, Arundhati’s mother, was a force of nature, and even that is probably understating the case. She did everything with vim and vigor, and with an expectation that was more entitlement than optimism, that she would undoubtedly succeed in every undertaking—which she more-or-less did. Arundhati’s parents divorced when she was two, and Mrs. Roy promptly started a school on a shoestring budget. The only pains the school suffered seem to have been from rapid growth in physical size and scope of curriculum.
The relationship between mother and daughter was brittle at best; tough love would be a euphemistic characterization. The mother rarely had a kind word or gesture of affection for the daughter, and yet, their bond only seemed to strengthen with every prickly interaction—at least as Arundhati tells it. I have not a single doubt that she is a sincere and truthful memoirist.
Arundhati was clearly a smarter-than-average child: she succeeded academically as a child and graduated from a School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi. She married husband number one in 1978 at age 17, but divorced him in 1982. She married husband number two in 1984 and, still in her twenties, achieved recognition in writing screenplays.
The activist gene that was clearly present in the mother inevitably appears in the daughter on steroids, and much of her later writing fell into that context. However, she knew, or sensed that she should be writing something else. Her first novel, The God of Small Things, was four-to-five years in the making, but Arundhati knew she was meant to write it, and everything that came before was apprenticeship for this book. It was hugely successful, winning the Man Booker Prize in its publication year. Thereafter, the majority of her writing consisted of essays, with a second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, appearing 20 years after the first.
I suspect Mother Mary Comes to Me will be as successful as anything else Roy has written, if not more so. It is truly a terrific story of family and everything that goes along with that: happiness, joy, sadness, pain, success, disappointment; and if love seems absent or occasionally sacrificed, it is resoundingly redeemed at the end. I have consumed numerous memoirs over decades of reading—this one ranks as one of the best!
Roy’s prose in the memoir is terse and unsentimental, written almost with brutal journalistic brevity. For readers, this means a fast pace, but without any danger of a stumble as it becomes a compulsive page-turner. The mother-daughter interactions don’t seem to happen often, but that could be the pace at which events move.
If nothing else, Mary Roy, Arundhati’s mother, was a force of nature, and even that is probably understating the case. She did everything with vim and vigor, and with an expectation that was more entitlement than optimism, that she would undoubtedly succeed in every undertaking—which she more-or-less did. Arundhati’s parents divorced when she was two, and Mrs. Roy promptly started a school on a shoestring budget. The only pains the school suffered seem to have been from rapid growth in physical size and scope of curriculum.
The relationship between mother and daughter was brittle at best; tough love would be a euphemistic characterization. The mother rarely had a kind word or gesture of affection for the daughter, and yet, their bond only seemed to strengthen with every prickly interaction—at least as Arundhati tells it. I have not a single doubt that she is a sincere and truthful memoirist.
Arundhati was clearly a smarter-than-average child: she succeeded academically as a child and graduated from a School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi. She married husband number one in 1978 at age 17, but divorced him in 1982. She married husband number two in 1984 and, still in her twenties, achieved recognition in writing screenplays.
The activist gene that was clearly present in the mother inevitably appears in the daughter on steroids, and much of her later writing fell into that context. However, she knew, or sensed that she should be writing something else. Her first novel, The God of Small Things, was four-to-five years in the making, but Arundhati knew she was meant to write it, and everything that came before was apprenticeship for this book. It was hugely successful, winning the Man Booker Prize in its publication year. Thereafter, the majority of her writing consisted of essays, with a second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, appearing 20 years after the first.
I suspect Mother Mary Comes to Me will be as successful as anything else Roy has written, if not more so. It is truly a terrific story of family and everything that goes along with that: happiness, joy, sadness, pain, success, disappointment; and if love seems absent or occasionally sacrificed, it is resoundingly redeemed at the end. I have consumed numerous memoirs over decades of reading—this one ranks as one of the best!
September 10, 2025
Imperdível. Tocante. Enriquecedor.
June 17, 2025
Early in this memoir, the author states: "I'm weary of endless theories and explanations. I think I have begun to prefer descriptions." This sentence could be the banner for this narrative journey. If you're looking for a whole lot of naval gazing, it's not this memoir. If you're looking for a focus on the author as award-winning writer, it's not this memoir (and that may or may not meet your expectations). But if you're up for a whirlwind journey of a million miles, filled with colorful characters, some rather harrowing childhood and early adult experiences, compelling descriptions, a dash of wit and self-reflection, all against a cultural and political backdrop (of course) of India, then you will likely find this memoir a rich and rewarding experience. It's really not about Mrs. Roy ("Mother Mary"). Although she is prominently featured in the memoir, primarily in the beginning and making a visible reappearance towards and through to the end, she is not ever-present, nor is she the main focus of the memoir. Rather, she's more of a presence--at times equally demanding, intelligent, scrappy, monstrous, plotting, manipulative, histrionic, cruel, brooding--but also (and especially) as a single mother in India making some culturally radical decisions-- very courageous and revolutionary. She is at times downright comical, and Roy's flare for the descriptive conveys this in an unforgettable way (oh, the film version...). But Mrs. Roy is NOT the center of the memoir (and for that, I say, thank goodness, as the Mommy Memoir market is saturated and problematic...at best). So Mrs. Roy is a complex character indeed, as is her daughter. But that's what makes the memoir so engaging. It's neither hagiography nor hatchet job. Thank you to Simon & Schuster for the ARC (Goodreads Giveaways)!
May 14, 2025
Truly one of the best, most beautiful books I’ve ever read. Essential reading for anyone and everyone who loves the God of Small Things.
July 30, 2025
“She was my shelter and my storm.”
This is a heartbreakingly beautiful truth of a sometimes difficult and at times rewarding relationship between a daughter and her mother. As I read Arubdhati Roy’s memories, I kept thinking that her mother’s strength in being a single mother in a country that wouldn’t approve, who did incredible things with her life, including opening a school, must have given her daughter the influence to go out in the world and become this amazing author. But when I read some of the accounts of the way her mother talked to and treated her children, it seemed harsher than it needed to be and I could understand why her daughter wanted to be independent immediately at age 18. I truly felt conflicted by the way mother and daughter were towards each other, but I have all sons, so maybe I am a bit biased. I will say that the author’s writing style is so beautiful and there were so many lines in this book that were original and elegant but also relatable. I liked it!!
Thank you to the authors, publishers and Goodreads for giving me the opportunity to read and review 😊
Disclaimer - I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway
This is a heartbreakingly beautiful truth of a sometimes difficult and at times rewarding relationship between a daughter and her mother. As I read Arubdhati Roy’s memories, I kept thinking that her mother’s strength in being a single mother in a country that wouldn’t approve, who did incredible things with her life, including opening a school, must have given her daughter the influence to go out in the world and become this amazing author. But when I read some of the accounts of the way her mother talked to and treated her children, it seemed harsher than it needed to be and I could understand why her daughter wanted to be independent immediately at age 18. I truly felt conflicted by the way mother and daughter were towards each other, but I have all sons, so maybe I am a bit biased. I will say that the author’s writing style is so beautiful and there were so many lines in this book that were original and elegant but also relatable. I liked it!!
Thank you to the authors, publishers and Goodreads for giving me the opportunity to read and review 😊
Disclaimer - I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway
April 3, 2025
I have a friend whose stories about her mother are so astonishing that I often tell her she should write a book. Arundhati Roy, however, has done exactly that—drawing from her own complex, tumultuous, and at times harrowing relationship with her mother, Mary.
Mary was very complex. On the one hand, she was a crusader for women's rights in India. She spent decades fighting for daughters to receive an equal share of inheritance as sons. Mary founded and operated a very successful school, leaving behind an impressive legacy. However, she wasn't without her flaws—she was physically and emotionally abusive to her two children, and really anyone who crossed her. She was manipulative and cruel. She was the inspirational girl boss who would build you up only to throw a knockout punch if you got too confident.
When it came to me, Mrs. Roy taught me how to think, then raged against my thoughts. She taught me to be free and raged against my freedom. She taught me to write and resented the author I became.
Her writing is both beautiful and sharp, blending intelligence with raw honesty. She doesn’t shy away from the painful, heart-wrenching moments, yet beneath it all, there’s a deep respect—and perhaps even love—for her mother. It’s complex, it’s unflinching, and it’s deeply human.
I received this book through a Goodreads Giveaway in exchange for an honest review.
I also loved this perfectly succinct way of summing up sibling interactions: "It was typical of their brother-sister relationship; help and harm in equal measure."
Mary was very complex. On the one hand, she was a crusader for women's rights in India. She spent decades fighting for daughters to receive an equal share of inheritance as sons. Mary founded and operated a very successful school, leaving behind an impressive legacy. However, she wasn't without her flaws—she was physically and emotionally abusive to her two children, and really anyone who crossed her. She was manipulative and cruel. She was the inspirational girl boss who would build you up only to throw a knockout punch if you got too confident.
When it came to me, Mrs. Roy taught me how to think, then raged against my thoughts. She taught me to be free and raged against my freedom. She taught me to write and resented the author I became.
Her writing is both beautiful and sharp, blending intelligence with raw honesty. She doesn’t shy away from the painful, heart-wrenching moments, yet beneath it all, there’s a deep respect—and perhaps even love—for her mother. It’s complex, it’s unflinching, and it’s deeply human.
I received this book through a Goodreads Giveaway in exchange for an honest review.
I also loved this perfectly succinct way of summing up sibling interactions: "It was typical of their brother-sister relationship; help and harm in equal measure."
July 21, 2025
Arundhati's journey into her writing career was inspired by her complex relationship with her mother.
After her mother died in 2022, Roy began writing understanding her feelings at age eighteen in her flight to freedom from her mother.
Roy's mother founded a school in Kerala India were Roy spent her childhood
After her mother died in 2022, Roy began writing understanding her feelings at age eighteen in her flight to freedom from her mother.
Roy's mother founded a school in Kerala India were Roy spent her childhood
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 10, 2025
It goes straight onto the shelf of my most cherished memoirs, alongside The Cost of Living (Levy, 2018) and In the Dream House (Machado, 2019), each spine a testament to survival, tenderness, and truth. The writing is breathtaking, lyrical, and unpredictable. Nothing could have prepared me for Roy coming undone in the final breaths of her narration, her voice trembling, breaking, as she said goodbye to both her shelter and her storm.
August 28, 2025
I read memoirs once in a while but I still don't know where I stand with the genre. That confusion was still there with the idea of Arundhati's memoir. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to know about her life in detail but I definitely needed more of her writing.
It is certainly not a memoir in the traditional sense. It couldn't be.
Don't want to give too much away for people who are eagerly waiting to get their hands on a copy.
It is certainly not a memoir in the traditional sense. It couldn't be.
Don't want to give too much away for people who are eagerly waiting to get their hands on a copy.
September 1, 2025
I must read the god of small things now!
Thank you to the publisher for my ARC!
Thank you to the publisher for my ARC!
August 21, 2025
I devoured a book after a very, very long time. This had everything I had hoped The Ministry of Utmost Happiness would, and what The God of Small Things did, a language and a world so fiercely Roy’s that it pulls you in and drowns you, and you don’t even want to come up for air. In the growing up years, Rahel and Ammu sometimes coalesce into Mrs. Mary Roy and Arundhati, and that was my favourite part of the book - her childhood, the Meenachil, the cold moth with it’s wings on her heart, the loathing and the love. ❤️ what an incredible memoir.
September 2, 2025
I've had to sit on this before I could rate it. How can you rate such a personal tale? I'm not rating Roy or her writing. I am rating my experience of reading the book and boy was it tough.
It's triggering and disturbing but also inexplicably immersive. It may just be my fastest non-fiction read. The following are my main takeaways in no particular order of importance.
1. Mothers. (That is all. I will say more when I understand more. As of now, I do not.)
2. Serendipity. (Roy's first article gets published because a visiting friend reads a sheaf lying around and decides to include it in the magazine he runs. Her first novel gets published because a common friend at a publishing house could be sent a copy of the first draft. Off chances and contacts begin her career. It is both inspiring and grounding. You need to have social capital but you also need to be really good. You need to have a unique voice to be able to make it.)
3. Love. (I don't really know how to define love but there is love in Roy's life in the most unconventional ways. I particularly liked her relationships with three men. They all seemed different in nature but equally deep. As someone with close to no significant male influence in life, these were fascinating to me.)
4. Politics. (I like Roy's politics. I learnt a lot about the bigotry of the Congress government in the late 90s and early 2000s. And the slow but steady parallel rise of the RSS. Chilling. I see how we've reached where we are at.)
For reasons I haven't been able to articulate in the review, this is a book I won't forget. Miss Roy, you're something else.
It's triggering and disturbing but also inexplicably immersive. It may just be my fastest non-fiction read. The following are my main takeaways in no particular order of importance.
1. Mothers. (That is all. I will say more when I understand more. As of now, I do not.)
2. Serendipity. (Roy's first article gets published because a visiting friend reads a sheaf lying around and decides to include it in the magazine he runs. Her first novel gets published because a common friend at a publishing house could be sent a copy of the first draft. Off chances and contacts begin her career. It is both inspiring and grounding. You need to have social capital but you also need to be really good. You need to have a unique voice to be able to make it.)
3. Love. (I don't really know how to define love but there is love in Roy's life in the most unconventional ways. I particularly liked her relationships with three men. They all seemed different in nature but equally deep. As someone with close to no significant male influence in life, these were fascinating to me.)
4. Politics. (I like Roy's politics. I learnt a lot about the bigotry of the Congress government in the late 90s and early 2000s. And the slow but steady parallel rise of the RSS. Chilling. I see how we've reached where we are at.)
For reasons I haven't been able to articulate in the review, this is a book I won't forget. Miss Roy, you're something else.
September 5, 2025
Recommending this to everyone. Brilliant and, dare I say, moving.
August 22, 2025
3.5 ⭐️
August 28, 2025
devoured
July 15, 2025
Okay, so first of all—I wasn’t exactly sure what I was getting into with Mother Mary Comes to Me. I thought it might be super religious or preachy, but it’s actually way deeper and more relatable than I expected. Yeah, there’s spiritual stuff in it, but it’s more about finding peace and strength when everything feels like it’s falling apart. Which, let’s be honest, is kind of how being a teenager feels 90% of the time.
The story follows this girl who’s going through a lot—like, her family’s a mess, school is overwhelming, and she feels totally invisible. But then she starts having these dreams or visions (you’re never really sure if they’re real or not) where Mother Mary talks to her. And it’s not like some glowing angel moment—it’s raw. It’s like Mary is this calming voice in the middle of her storm, telling her to breathe, slow down, and trust herself.
One of the quotes that stuck with me was when Mary says, “Let it be.” It sounds so simple, but in the book, it hits hard. Like, sometimes you’re trying so hard to fix everything or make people happy or be perfect, and the truth is—you can’t. Sometimes you just have to let things be, and keep going.
What I really loved is that this isn’t a story about being “saved” by someone else. It’s about finding the strength to save yourself, with a little bit of help from something bigger—whether that’s faith, a friend, or just your own inner voice.
It’s a quiet book, but powerful. It made me cry, not because it was sad, but because it felt true. And honestly, we need more books like that—especially ones that talk about healing without acting like it’s easy.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 whispered prayers in the dark
🙏🙏🙏🙏✨
The story follows this girl who’s going through a lot—like, her family’s a mess, school is overwhelming, and she feels totally invisible. But then she starts having these dreams or visions (you’re never really sure if they’re real or not) where Mother Mary talks to her. And it’s not like some glowing angel moment—it’s raw. It’s like Mary is this calming voice in the middle of her storm, telling her to breathe, slow down, and trust herself.
One of the quotes that stuck with me was when Mary says, “Let it be.” It sounds so simple, but in the book, it hits hard. Like, sometimes you’re trying so hard to fix everything or make people happy or be perfect, and the truth is—you can’t. Sometimes you just have to let things be, and keep going.
What I really loved is that this isn’t a story about being “saved” by someone else. It’s about finding the strength to save yourself, with a little bit of help from something bigger—whether that’s faith, a friend, or just your own inner voice.
It’s a quiet book, but powerful. It made me cry, not because it was sad, but because it felt true. And honestly, we need more books like that—especially ones that talk about healing without acting like it’s easy.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 whispered prayers in the dark
🙏🙏🙏🙏✨
September 4, 2025
10/5 stars!
August 16, 2025
Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
Pub Date: Sept 2/25
This is a beautiful and powerful memoir reflecting on her life and her complicated relationship with her mother, who she refers to as “my shelter and my storm”. It is also an examination of a country she deeply loves and the politics and patriarchal traditions she has spent her life resisting.
Written in her signature lyrical prose, the memoir is breathtaking, sad, thought provoking and deeply inspiring. At its heart is how she is shaped by her difficult and complicated relation with her mother, who she refers to as Mrs. Roy, a complex, brilliant, and formidable woman. Mrs. Roy refuses to be restrained by the constraints on women and defied societal expectations by founding a non traditional school making her beloved by students and the community, yet she was abusive and rejecting toward her children. Roy examines her mother and their relationship with grace, vulnerability, and an extraordinary capacity for compassion and forgiveness. She confronts her scars and pain without bitterness, embracing them with rare emotional insight.
Roy provides us with an intimate and inspirational glimpse into her fascinating journey - from her early years shaped by poverty and abuse, to her work in films and screenwriting, and to the publication The God of Small Things. Readers will enjoy her reflections on her writing process.
What grounds the memoir is Roy’s political conscience. She offers sharp commentary on India’s complex culture, traditions and turbulent politics: from caste and gender oppression, to violent communal and political riots, corporate land grabs, and the persecution of Muslim citizens. Her courage as a political activist, continuing to write fearlessly despite serious threats, impressed me.
If you have ever enjoyed her writing you will love getting to know her in a whole new way.
Pub Date: Sept 2/25
This is a beautiful and powerful memoir reflecting on her life and her complicated relationship with her mother, who she refers to as “my shelter and my storm”. It is also an examination of a country she deeply loves and the politics and patriarchal traditions she has spent her life resisting.
Written in her signature lyrical prose, the memoir is breathtaking, sad, thought provoking and deeply inspiring. At its heart is how she is shaped by her difficult and complicated relation with her mother, who she refers to as Mrs. Roy, a complex, brilliant, and formidable woman. Mrs. Roy refuses to be restrained by the constraints on women and defied societal expectations by founding a non traditional school making her beloved by students and the community, yet she was abusive and rejecting toward her children. Roy examines her mother and their relationship with grace, vulnerability, and an extraordinary capacity for compassion and forgiveness. She confronts her scars and pain without bitterness, embracing them with rare emotional insight.
Roy provides us with an intimate and inspirational glimpse into her fascinating journey - from her early years shaped by poverty and abuse, to her work in films and screenwriting, and to the publication The God of Small Things. Readers will enjoy her reflections on her writing process.
What grounds the memoir is Roy’s political conscience. She offers sharp commentary on India’s complex culture, traditions and turbulent politics: from caste and gender oppression, to violent communal and political riots, corporate land grabs, and the persecution of Muslim citizens. Her courage as a political activist, continuing to write fearlessly despite serious threats, impressed me.
If you have ever enjoyed her writing you will love getting to know her in a whole new way.
September 3, 2025
What a superb memoir - part autobiography, part homage to Arundhati Roy's mother (Mrs. Roy), part critical observations on the growth of Hindu Nationalism and its rise to national political power, and always the self-told story of becoming a world-reknowned author. Mother Mary Comes To Me is a text of beautifully entrancing language and well-conveyed reflection, accompanied by precision and clarity in Roy's descriptions of the socio-political context within which she and her mother have lived and grown.
Roy grew up in a challenging, frequently abusive family setting. Her mother, Mary Roy, was a strong, independent, and brilliantly persevering person in her own right, who scratched her way into a teaching career, fought serious illness throughout her life, confronted sexism and disdain aimed at her - a working woman, a single mother, a non-Hindu ..., yet, was regularly cruel, demanding, and critical with her young and developing children. Roy admired and adored her mother, and also feared and avoided her. Their normally confrontational relationship is at the heart of this book. The tentative dedication reads, in part, "For Mary Roy, Who never said Let It Be."
In that Mother-modeled and Mother-imposed "Don't Let It Be (Take and Hold the High Moral Ground)" standard, we find the moral/political foundation of much of daughter/author Roy's own ongoing confrontation with life. After honing her writing skills on film scripts, her desire to produce something wholly her own led to her wrestling her "language-animal" to the ground in her massively successful first novel, The God of Small Things - a novel built on her life in a small Kerala town and on her childhood refuge-taking from family storms on the banks of the Meenachil River, befriending a squirrel and spending hours observing and conversing with the river's flora and fauna. Arundhati Roy was established as a writer of consequence.
Always conscious of India's cultural and political struggles, reacting to the Hindu nationalist rise to power, Roy accepted an invitation to observe and write about a major dam project in the Narmada River valley that would displace hundreds of thousands, and would destroy villages, towns, and jungle in a region the size of a city-state. "For my part, I wanted to test myself, to see whether I could find a language to write about the Narmada and the tragedy that had befallen it in the way I had found a language to write about Ayemenem and the Meenachil. Could I write about irrigation, agriculture, displacement, and drainage the way I wrote about love and death, or about characters in a novel?" (ms. p. 228). Roy's resulting published essay, "The Greater Common Good," stirred public controversy, put her in jeopardy of being found guilty of contempt of court by the National Supreme Court (whose decision had removed the final legal barrier to dam construction), and helped to solidify Roy's sense that "writing about things that vitally affected people's lives" was very much an appropriate focus for a writer. Her characterizations of the political struggles involved, her parts in the events, and her resulting writings demonstrate well her continuing commitment to combat the tendency to "let it be." (Wikipedia lists currently 2 novels, this memoir, and 20 book-length political economic essays and collections of essays to Roy's credit).
Mother Mary Comes To Me will inevitably grow Roy's audience, and can't help but push many of us to explore her works well beyond the well-received novels.
[I am pleased to have received a pre-publication paperback copy of Arundhati Roy's Mother Mary Comes To Me, to be published by Scribner in September 2025. My copy was awarded through a Goodreads Giveaway, received and read in April 2025.]
Roy grew up in a challenging, frequently abusive family setting. Her mother, Mary Roy, was a strong, independent, and brilliantly persevering person in her own right, who scratched her way into a teaching career, fought serious illness throughout her life, confronted sexism and disdain aimed at her - a working woman, a single mother, a non-Hindu ..., yet, was regularly cruel, demanding, and critical with her young and developing children. Roy admired and adored her mother, and also feared and avoided her. Their normally confrontational relationship is at the heart of this book. The tentative dedication reads, in part, "For Mary Roy, Who never said Let It Be."
In that Mother-modeled and Mother-imposed "Don't Let It Be (Take and Hold the High Moral Ground)" standard, we find the moral/political foundation of much of daughter/author Roy's own ongoing confrontation with life. After honing her writing skills on film scripts, her desire to produce something wholly her own led to her wrestling her "language-animal" to the ground in her massively successful first novel, The God of Small Things - a novel built on her life in a small Kerala town and on her childhood refuge-taking from family storms on the banks of the Meenachil River, befriending a squirrel and spending hours observing and conversing with the river's flora and fauna. Arundhati Roy was established as a writer of consequence.
Always conscious of India's cultural and political struggles, reacting to the Hindu nationalist rise to power, Roy accepted an invitation to observe and write about a major dam project in the Narmada River valley that would displace hundreds of thousands, and would destroy villages, towns, and jungle in a region the size of a city-state. "For my part, I wanted to test myself, to see whether I could find a language to write about the Narmada and the tragedy that had befallen it in the way I had found a language to write about Ayemenem and the Meenachil. Could I write about irrigation, agriculture, displacement, and drainage the way I wrote about love and death, or about characters in a novel?" (ms. p. 228). Roy's resulting published essay, "The Greater Common Good," stirred public controversy, put her in jeopardy of being found guilty of contempt of court by the National Supreme Court (whose decision had removed the final legal barrier to dam construction), and helped to solidify Roy's sense that "writing about things that vitally affected people's lives" was very much an appropriate focus for a writer. Her characterizations of the political struggles involved, her parts in the events, and her resulting writings demonstrate well her continuing commitment to combat the tendency to "let it be." (Wikipedia lists currently 2 novels, this memoir, and 20 book-length political economic essays and collections of essays to Roy's credit).
Mother Mary Comes To Me will inevitably grow Roy's audience, and can't help but push many of us to explore her works well beyond the well-received novels.
[I am pleased to have received a pre-publication paperback copy of Arundhati Roy's Mother Mary Comes To Me, to be published by Scribner in September 2025. My copy was awarded through a Goodreads Giveaway, received and read in April 2025.]
May 20, 2025
Every word written in this book, means something. It carries weight, experience and unimaginable character. If the author is Arundhati Roy, you pick the book up and read it! I promise you, it’ll be a book you will keep re-reading, like everything else she’s written.
Want to read
February 6, 2025#GoodreadsGiveaway
September 3, 2025
I’ve just finished a book I'm certain will be a literary touchstone for years to come: Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me. This isn't just a memoir; it’s a deep, unflinching excavation of her tumultuous relationship with her mother—a woman Roy herself described as both a "shelter and a storm."
For me, this book hit a uniquely personal chord. I had the privilege of studying at Corpus Christi (now Pallikoodam), the very school Mrs. Roy built and, as Arundhati recounts, her "favorite child." As one of the girls she claimed were given "a spine and wings," I've long seen her mother as a brilliant, albeit volatile, force of nature. Yet, at a memorial service for Mrs. Roy, Arundhati revealed that her mother could be a light to her students only because her own children, she and her brother, absorbed the darkness. This book dives headfirst into that darkness.
I was braced for the difficult stories thanks to snippets released on Instagram, but the full accounts were truly horrifying. No child should endure what she did, especially not from their primary parent. Yet, it wasn't a complete surprise. We, as students, were familiar with Mrs. Roy's volatile outbursts. We never knew what would set her off, and I remember her publicly shaming students for the smallest transgressions. We, and our parents, accepted it as part of her genius—and she was brilliant. Roy doesn't shy away from her mother's brilliance either. We always said Mrs. Roy was eccentric, and after all, eccentricity is just a polite word for madness. She recounts the school driver—a person I know, too—telling her that her mother's particular brand of madness was necessary to run a school like Corpus Christi in a town like Kottayam. He was right. With all her light and all her darkness, Mrs. Roy made that school what it is: a trailblazing, stereotype-busting success.
This memoir is a challenging read for another reason: it seamlessly weaves the personal with the political. While not a political treatise in the vein of her essays, it traces the major social and political events that shaped her life, recounting them in soul-churning detail that shows how they are inextricably linked to her personal narrative.
The stories of the school, its staff, and its students form a collective memory for us former students. While I wasn't there for the famous incident where Mrs. Roy gave her bra to the boys to stop them from teasing girls, the story was passed down through the years. I was, however, present for her reading from The God of Small Things and the events that unfolded around it. So much of this book feels intensely personal, as if she is speaking directly to me and my peers.
While this memoir unflinchingly excavates the pain and trauma of a difficult relationship, it is, at its core, a profound testament to a daughter's enduring love. Arundhati’s account of her mother’s final moments and funeral is a heart-wrenching crescendo of grief and affection. Even though I was there to witness those final rites, her prose brings a fresh, poignant wave of emotion. Through her masterful storytelling, she transforms a personal loss into a shared human experience, crafting a beautiful, aching tribute to a woman who was a universe unto herself. This book is a reminder that Arundhati Roy is truly one of the greatest literary minds of our generation
For me, this book hit a uniquely personal chord. I had the privilege of studying at Corpus Christi (now Pallikoodam), the very school Mrs. Roy built and, as Arundhati recounts, her "favorite child." As one of the girls she claimed were given "a spine and wings," I've long seen her mother as a brilliant, albeit volatile, force of nature. Yet, at a memorial service for Mrs. Roy, Arundhati revealed that her mother could be a light to her students only because her own children, she and her brother, absorbed the darkness. This book dives headfirst into that darkness.
I was braced for the difficult stories thanks to snippets released on Instagram, but the full accounts were truly horrifying. No child should endure what she did, especially not from their primary parent. Yet, it wasn't a complete surprise. We, as students, were familiar with Mrs. Roy's volatile outbursts. We never knew what would set her off, and I remember her publicly shaming students for the smallest transgressions. We, and our parents, accepted it as part of her genius—and she was brilliant. Roy doesn't shy away from her mother's brilliance either. We always said Mrs. Roy was eccentric, and after all, eccentricity is just a polite word for madness. She recounts the school driver—a person I know, too—telling her that her mother's particular brand of madness was necessary to run a school like Corpus Christi in a town like Kottayam. He was right. With all her light and all her darkness, Mrs. Roy made that school what it is: a trailblazing, stereotype-busting success.
This memoir is a challenging read for another reason: it seamlessly weaves the personal with the political. While not a political treatise in the vein of her essays, it traces the major social and political events that shaped her life, recounting them in soul-churning detail that shows how they are inextricably linked to her personal narrative.
The stories of the school, its staff, and its students form a collective memory for us former students. While I wasn't there for the famous incident where Mrs. Roy gave her bra to the boys to stop them from teasing girls, the story was passed down through the years. I was, however, present for her reading from The God of Small Things and the events that unfolded around it. So much of this book feels intensely personal, as if she is speaking directly to me and my peers.
While this memoir unflinchingly excavates the pain and trauma of a difficult relationship, it is, at its core, a profound testament to a daughter's enduring love. Arundhati’s account of her mother’s final moments and funeral is a heart-wrenching crescendo of grief and affection. Even though I was there to witness those final rites, her prose brings a fresh, poignant wave of emotion. Through her masterful storytelling, she transforms a personal loss into a shared human experience, crafting a beautiful, aching tribute to a woman who was a universe unto herself. This book is a reminder that Arundhati Roy is truly one of the greatest literary minds of our generation
August 28, 2025
It didn’t take long for me to become an admirer of Arundhati Roy. It all began in my sophomore year, when I first met Estha and Rahel in The God of Small Things, followed by Anjum the Tigress in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, whose story unveiled the brutal truths of the Indian political landscape.
More than novels, Roy’s books have always felt like a tête-à-tête intimate and transformative. They have not only shaped my political consciousness but also expanded the dimensions of my imagination. Mother Mary Comes to Me is no different. To me, it is nothing short of a comfort.
The memoir delicately traces how Roy, as a “fatherless, motherless, homeless, jobless, reckless girl,” turned every fragment of her life into a carefully placed brick in the stunning structure she continues to build. What could have easily collapsed into trauma, she shaped into resilience, and perhaps her degree in architecture helped with that.
“Chacko? Can I ask you a question?” Rahel said.
“Ask me two,” Chacko said.
“Chacko, do you love Sophie Mol most in the world?”
“She’s my daughter.”
Rahel considered this.
“Chacko? Is it necessary that people have to love their own children most in the world?”
“There are no rules,” Chacko said. “But people usually do. Anything’s possible in human nature.”
These small exchanges from The God of Small Things.
,like so many others, have taken on new meaning after reading Mother Mary Comes to Me.
“There is no one in the world whom I have loved more than you.”
“You are the most unusual, wonderful woman I have ever known. I adore you.”
With raw narrative and unflinching sincerity, Roy captures her complicated yet deeply affectionate relationship with her mother, Mrs. Roy, a relationship that resonates with many readers, including me. Their bond compels you to reflect on your own,
on mothers, on those who came, who left, and those who remain.
This memoir will always stay close to my heart. It feels less like a book and more like a letter from a dear friend.
More than novels, Roy’s books have always felt like a tête-à-tête intimate and transformative. They have not only shaped my political consciousness but also expanded the dimensions of my imagination. Mother Mary Comes to Me is no different. To me, it is nothing short of a comfort.
The memoir delicately traces how Roy, as a “fatherless, motherless, homeless, jobless, reckless girl,” turned every fragment of her life into a carefully placed brick in the stunning structure she continues to build. What could have easily collapsed into trauma, she shaped into resilience, and perhaps her degree in architecture helped with that.
“Chacko? Can I ask you a question?” Rahel said.
“Ask me two,” Chacko said.
“Chacko, do you love Sophie Mol most in the world?”
“She’s my daughter.”
Rahel considered this.
“Chacko? Is it necessary that people have to love their own children most in the world?”
“There are no rules,” Chacko said. “But people usually do. Anything’s possible in human nature.”
These small exchanges from The God of Small Things.
,like so many others, have taken on new meaning after reading Mother Mary Comes to Me.
“There is no one in the world whom I have loved more than you.”
“You are the most unusual, wonderful woman I have ever known. I adore you.”
With raw narrative and unflinching sincerity, Roy captures her complicated yet deeply affectionate relationship with her mother, Mrs. Roy, a relationship that resonates with many readers, including me. Their bond compels you to reflect on your own,
on mothers, on those who came, who left, and those who remain.
This memoir will always stay close to my heart. It feels less like a book and more like a letter from a dear friend.
September 8, 2025
very healing for a failure daughter to syrian christian parents. i didnt know i had an angry mother in common with arundhati roy. i love this book
roy enjoys a unique position in the indian political landscape — writing and bringing out stories of people’s movements, yet being (relatively) immune from a strict judicial action, which her friends including G.N. Saibaba have faced and suffered from. roy is aware of her privilege and uses it very well.
she goes over her life, locates herself in india’s political context and is introspective about it. she recounts what is it that made her who she is.
a very honest and real account —“ The more I was hounded as an anti- national, the surer I was that India was the place I loved, the place to which I belonged. Where else could I be the hooligan that I was becoming? Where else would I find co- hooligans I so admired? And who among us supposed equals had the right to decide what was ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ national?”
roy enjoys a unique position in the indian political landscape — writing and bringing out stories of people’s movements, yet being (relatively) immune from a strict judicial action, which her friends including G.N. Saibaba have faced and suffered from. roy is aware of her privilege and uses it very well.
she goes over her life, locates herself in india’s political context and is introspective about it. she recounts what is it that made her who she is.
a very honest and real account —“ The more I was hounded as an anti- national, the surer I was that India was the place I loved, the place to which I belonged. Where else could I be the hooligan that I was becoming? Where else would I find co- hooligans I so admired? And who among us supposed equals had the right to decide what was ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ national?”
September 9, 2025
And there were still some unresolved issues: If I was going to be three times her size, I would need three seats to sit on. So, three free tickets. Double. Triple. A maths class. A sum to solve. What is double-love divided by triple-my-size multiplied by free tickets divided by careless words? A cold, furry moth on a frightened heart. That moth was my constant companion. I learned early that the safest place can be the most dangerous. And that even when it isn’t, I make it so.
A heartfelt autobiography with at its centre the relationship with a mother, the Mrs Roy. The author writes from the heart, her life, her choices, her mistakes and absolutely all of them tied to her mother, an incredible but terrifying woman with a vocation for education. I think everyone will be able to relate in some way to the push and pull of parental domination. I particularly appreciated the insights into Indian life, Delhi and the vicissitudes of this amazing country and its peoples in the past few decades. I'm going to read all her books now.
A heartfelt autobiography with at its centre the relationship with a mother, the Mrs Roy. The author writes from the heart, her life, her choices, her mistakes and absolutely all of them tied to her mother, an incredible but terrifying woman with a vocation for education. I think everyone will be able to relate in some way to the push and pull of parental domination. I particularly appreciated the insights into Indian life, Delhi and the vicissitudes of this amazing country and its peoples in the past few decades. I'm going to read all her books now.
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