Review of Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy

The author of The God of Small Things recounts her path from life with her volatile, emotionally and verbally abusive, strong mother to her own artistic expression, romantic partnerships, activism, and fierce guarding of her creative space.

In Mother Mary Comes to Me, the author of The God of Small Things shares a memoir that in part explores her fierce, tough mother, her verbal and emotional abuse, her admirable causes and passion for them, and their complicated relationship.

Roy was shaped by the woman she calls "my shelter and my storm," and she tracks back to her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, through Roy's young adulthood and rejection of her mother's presence in her life, to her romantic partners, her career in filmmaking, the publication of her novels, her political activism, her funding of other artists' projects, and her mother's 2022 death and Roy's surprisingly powerful, ongoing reactions to it.

By the time she attended her mother's school along with her beloved brother, Roy had already adapted to cope with her mother's violent outbursts, her emotional blackmail, her volatile moods, and her verbal abuse. When she went away to boarding school and created space between her mother and herself, Roy recognized the destructive nature of their connection and largely severed ties with her. Emphasizing the distance she was forced to create, she refers to her mother as "Mrs. Roy" throughout the book.

I was most intrigued hearing about Roy's relationships, her evolution as an artist, and her development of a fiercely guarded space in which she could exist and create, at great cost to her personal life. A significant amount of the book relates political upheaval and the activism Roy became impassioned about and deeply involved in. This activism somewhat mirrors her mother's years-long, public fight for women's rights in India against a range of antiquated, mysoginistic, powerful laws and standards.

Only when Roy was in middle age did she seem to feel that the relationship could be more even and managed without emotional turmoil harmful to Roy herself.

I listened to this as a library audiobook.

More Memoirs, More India

Arundhati Roy is the author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

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