Mother Mary Comes to Me

De: Arundhati Roy

Narrado por: Arundhati Roy

Named One of the New York Times Book Review's Top Ten Books of 2025

Finalist for the Kirkus Prize

A raw and deeply moving memoir from the legendary author of The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness that traces her 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.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"This haunting and tender memoir is an insightful exploration of a mother-daughter relationship and India’s culture."

Mother Mary and The Stockholm Syndrome 😄

I don't know the wisdom in having a writer narrate his/her book. "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness" certainly didnt benefit from it. But this one feels about right. The strong accent and the mis-pronounced words, however wince-inducing, serve as a reminder that this is a woman born and raised in a non-English speaking [as a first language] world. A disadvantage which she not just over came but conquered and [even] thrived on. A tastament to the strength of.... something or someone... I am sure. [Despite, that is, the well-acknowledged priviledges Roy had from being "an organ child" of Mary Roy and the glazed-over relationship with the much older filmmaker lover turned husband.]

Be that as it may, does it feel like a joke, hearing how Roy's world was a world that championed white culture, literature, and language? An enviroment that worshipped at white people's altar while scrutinizing its fellow countrymen with undue severeity [so much that I asked on Blusky, after reading "My Seditious Heart", why anyone would call that "land of monstrosity" "home"]? A bit! How strange it is, that a writer, as self-aware as Arundhati Roy, doesnt seem to recognize the irony in that? Did it, moreover, make me wish that she wrote this one in one of the many languages spoken in Kerela/India, at least as a gesture.. to what colonization did to a beautiful country and a rich culture whose illness may need more than a century to cure? Indeed it did.

Still, I did get answers to questions I had about one of my favorite writers in the world ["The God Small Things".. how much do I love thee. Lemme count the ways...]

Questions like:
Why [on earth] architecture?
How end up in a movie?
When did she become an activist and why?
Married, but living apart?

A decent read.

The author has the best reading voice

what a dedication and history. so many parallels with our own lives make it that much more touching.

A real memoir

I am inspired by the honesty and healing shared in this book, personal, political, and spiritual. It is the best thing I’ve read this year: 2025.

Humanness

If you are a fan of arundati Roy fan I encourage you to take this in. Arundati is the reader.

Story, Language, Politics and Spirit.

Gorgeous Story, Narration, Spiritual and Political Economy. She is brilliant and totally human. I am honored to read her.