‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’ a memoir worth reading every word

“I left my mother not because I didn’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her.” — “Mother Mary Comes to Me” by Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy is the author of the Booker Prize winning book “The God of Small Things” (1997). It was her first book and catapulted her into international celebrity status, becoming the biggest-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. Ten years later, she then published another bestselling book, “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.” In the fall of last year, Roy published the autobiography “Mother Mary Comes to Me.”

When reading this memoir, it feels as though you’re listening to an elder telling her life story in a masterful way. Her way of storytelling had me so entranced that I could not put this book down.

The story starts with Roy discussing what it was like as a child living with her mother, Mary Roy, who became a well-known figure in India. She started one of India’s most successful schools and she became a women’s rights activist who took an inheritance case all the way to India’s Supreme Court and won. The case brought equal rights for Syrian Christian women in India. At the time, Syrian Christian women were not granted equal inheritance under the Travancore Christian Succession Act of 1916. Due to this law, women could inherit property but would only be paid the lesser of one-quarter of a son’s inheritance. Mary Roy ended up suing her brother in court, and after 26 years, she won her case.

Mary Roy may have been a stalwart in her community, but at home Arundhati and her brother experience a very different woman. They would watch as their mother was so good, kind and uplifting to students but would be verbally and physically abusive to her own children.

In the beginning of the memoir, Arundhati as a child apologizes for her mother and constantly walks on eggshells as her mom verbally abuses her and blames her for her physical ailments.

“My mother unloaded the burden of her quarrels and the daily dose of indignity that she had to endure onto my brother and me,” Arundhati Roy writes in “Mother Mary Comes to Me.”

At the age of 18, she finally flees her mother’s abuse to forge her own life in Delhi. She sleeps wherever she can in a city that is not friendly toward women. She ends up meeting a film producer who casts her in her own role. This begins her role as an artist and a writer, but it wasn’t without its constant downs more than wins. She also lives in the shadow of her overbearing and abusive mother who never celebrated any of her daughter’s successes.

This is a story about a daughter’s constant striving for her mother’s acceptance and love. I was blown away by the patience of Arundhati Roy. I can assure you; I would never have endured that treatment from my mother. The whole time I couldn’t help but think, “Ditch your mom, you’re doing great on your own.”

That said, this is what makes the memoir so compelling. She endured her mother’s abuse while becoming an incredibly talented woman and became a political activist herself when India started to fall under a fascist regime. This memoir has it all — it is worth reading every word.

Deborah Condit is the owner of Books on the Bosque, 6261 Riverside Plaza Lane, Suite A-2 or at booksonthebosque.com.