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Book Reviewed by: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.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (4/16/2026)
I just started Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy- a memoir about her conflicting relationship with her mother. Finished Project Hail Mary and then saw the movie! The book is a good story but science...
-Jorene_J
2026 first quarter besties
...Oliver, & Priscilla Warner THE CORRESPONDENT by Virginia Evans THE ROAD TO TENDER HEARTS by Annie Hartnett THE LION WOMEN OF TEHRAN by Marjan Kamali MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME by Arundhati Roy HALF OF A YELLOW SUN by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Contributed by Marie Webb
-Marie_Webb
2025 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists
...e standouts? Are there any you'd like to add to your list that you haven't already? Autobiography/Memoir : Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks (Viking) Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy (Scribner) Paper Girl by Beth Macy (Penguin) Shattered by Hanif Kureishi (Ecco) A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews (Bloomsbury) Biography : Lo...
-kim.kovacs
Kirkus finalists announced!
...shersweekly.com/9780062977397 Black in Blues : How a Color Tells the Story of My People by Imani Perry https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781668094716 Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy (Scribner) YOUNG READERS' LITERATURE Picture Books https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780823456475 Island Storm by Brian Floca, illustrated by Sydney...
-kim.kovacs
National Book Critics Circle Awards
2026
Memoirs are a way to settle the past by reorganizing trauma and its emotional price. Difficult families and troubled situations aren't unique but what changes from person to person—someone born here or someone born there—is how maltreatment shapes the perspective of the writer. The thirteenth chapter in the memoir is titled "You're a Millstone Around My Neck," a direct quote from mother to daughter in another fit of rage. Mrs. Roy added that she should have put Arundhati in an orphanage after she was born. Earlier in the memoir, in the chapter titled "Collateral," the author explains to the reader that she was raised in "the land of infanticide and female feticide, in which millions of daughters are done away with." Was that something Mrs. Roy briefly considered but now resented? Trying to raise a perfect daughter in a patriarchal culture that prefers sons can be overwhelming. It would be impossible for Mary Roy to unremember being a daughter herself and the violence that was inflicted upon her...continued
Full Review
(1198 words)
(Reviewed by Valerie Morales).
When Mary Roy was growing up in Delhi, India, she endured extensive trauma. Her violent father would yank her by her hair to hold her in place, then brutally whip her with his riding crop. Recentering his rage onto her mother, he would beat her until she bled, and in the heart of winter he would throw both wife and daughter out of the house. To escape her father, Mary proposed to the first man who wanted to marry her; he was an alcoholic she quickly left. As an adult, Mary, now a single mother, turned her rage against men.
Her daughter, novelist Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things), notes in her memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me that when her brother was a teenager, her mother raged at him, "You're ugly and stupid. If I were you, I'd ...
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