Arundhati Roy is a much-lauded novelist. She won the Booker Prize for her debut, THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS, and was longlisted for the Booker again for her second novel, THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS. Both books have been translated into more than 40 languages. She has been a world-famous advocate on behalf of a variety of political issues and has written many works of nonfiction. In 2023, she was awarded the prestigious European Essay Prize for lifetime achievement, and the following year she received the PEN Pinter Prize for telling “urgent stories of injustice with wit and beauty.”

Roy has now penned her first memoir, MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME. Despite her illustrious career and numerous accolades, the book is haunted by her mother’s hold over her life --- literally and figuratively --- making it fascinating and pedantic in equal measure.

"Arundhati Roy is an icon for bold females all across the world trying to effect change through art and living life itself."

There are very few memoirs where the author does not find a jumping-off point from their childhood. However, it is inevitable that the hold a parent has over their child begins to change, and the writer will rack up their own list of either horrible events or wondrous successes. This does occur in MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME, but Mother Mary, whom Roy calls “my shelter and my storm,” remains a larger-than-life presence who is intricately wrapped up in all of her daughter’s life experiences.

I don’t know why I was so surprised by the almost tyrannical presentation of Mary, a renowned educator and all-around control freak. Roy does admit that there were benefits to being brought up by someone who was both a great influence and a stalwart blockade to the life of a woman who is known for her biting humor, high intelligence and incredible courage in the face of political heresy and despicableness. I assumed that someone as forward-thinking and respected as Roy would have come from a world where these attributes were appreciated and supported, but clearly that was not the case.

Mary is a strong female, not exactly a feminist in philosophy but most surely in her abilities to survive a divorce and grow a school that educated young men and women in both practical and intellectual ways. The descriptions of their early life --- of her mother’s struggles and how she took those difficulties and the anger that came with them out on Roy and her brother --- are fierce and affecting. I found that I could only read the book in small chunks as the all-around negativity of their relationship was tough to absorb and process.

As Roy grows up, goes to school and leaves the homestead, she is forthright about the ways in which such a crazy upbringing during a tumultuous period in India’s history affected her. And she is more than honest when her age and raging hormones keep her from investing herself in those challenging times.

There is nothing poetic about the way that Roy depicts her life at any stage. The stories about her obscenity trial, which occurred upon the publication of THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS, ended up getting her sued three times: “Being accused of ‘obscenity and corrupting public morality’ would be the first of three criminal cases filed against me over the years, by separate, completely unconnected batches of five male advocates. One of which would send me, very briefly, to prison.” Her perspective on the vitriol she suffered by being such a straightforward and blunt female politicized writer is harrowing and compelling.

Like the recent James Baldwin biography, BALDWIN: A Love Story, MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME is difficult to read without feeling viscerally the pain caused by such victimization --- by the attempts to reassign blame to Roy's work and herself for her bold statements on the Indian historical timeline and for her own strong female characters --- and without wondering how she possibly could have continued to be so prodigiously public when her life was constantly being threatened.

Arundhati Roy is an icon for bold females all across the world trying to effect change through art and living life itself.