Review: Basically, Be Glad You Didn’t Have Arundhati Roy’s Mother

Review: Basically, be glad you didn’t have Arundhati Roy’s mother

Arundhati Roy’s coruscating new memoir centers her tumultuous relationship with her mother Mary Roy, a brilliant but volatile pathbreaker the acclaimed novelist calls “my mother, my gangster...my shelter and my storm.” In “Mother Mary Comes to Me,” the Booker Prize…

Arundhati Roy’s memoir on growing up in mother’s shadow

ARUNDHATI ROY’S forthcoming memoir, Mother Mary Comes To Me, is about the author’s close but fraught relationship with her mother, Mary Roy, whose death in 2022 her daughter has likened to “being hit by a truck”. Mary Roy, who insisted her children call her “Mrs Roy” in school, belonged to the Syrian Christian community. She does not seem a very nice person. The Financial Times, which interviewed Arundhati at her home in Delhi, reveals: “In an e…