In a Nutshell: A memoir penned by one of India’s most eloquent writers. I picked up *Mother Mary: A Memoir* by Arundhati Roy for her writing, and I was richly rewarded with her thoughts and words. Her actions aren’t always my cup of tea, but I judge memoirs by their content and not by the authors’ life choices. This was an easy win in that regard. Highly recommended. Looking for insightful book reviews? This is it.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~I'm not a big fan of memoirs. I find most of them fake and ...

I really appreciated this memoir for its portrayal of a difficult mother-daughter dynamic and how it shaped Arundhati Roy. Roy’s writing is honest and emotional, and it highlights how our caregivers can both egregiously hurt and belittle us while also influencing us in ways that are profound and poignant. The main reason I give "Mother Mary: A Memoir" three stars instead of a higher rating is that I felt that Roy’s writing could at times ramble and feel meandering/unfocused, though of course I r...

It has taken me years to come to terms with the fact that I was a middle child, one of three siblings, not two. My older sibling was a boy, and my younger sibling was a school. There was never any doubt about who our mother’s favorite child was. She loved, fought for, and protected her youngest child with everything she had. That kind of focused, ferocious love, regardless of what it may choose as its object, is a blessed love. The challenge for those of us who are not chosen, and instead watch ...

Arundhati won the Booker Prize for her very first book. And when this book launched in her village, at the school her mother founded, her uncle was seen there. Arundhati's uncle and Arundhati had a feud. When Mary Roy (Arundhati's mother) came to Kottayam with her young children, her mother (Arundhati's grandmother) did not want to let them stay. Then Mary Roy filed a case and claimed her 'rights'. Arundhati's uncle Isaac's pickle business was in a mess because of his sister. Anyway, seeing her ...

Arundhati Roy is savage. But so was her mother. When I finished reading "Mother Mary: A Memoir", I was unsettled by the fact that an activist as fierce as Arundhati often seemed to shrink before her mother’s ridicule. The rebel in me sighed in relief when she finally snapped back and broke a chair in response to one of Mary Roy’s outrageous demands. But by then, Mary had already slipped into a senile cognitive decline. *The God of Small Things* was one book that left me nostalgic for parts of K...

Arundhati Roy's new memoir, *Mother Mary: A Memoir*, explores her life and how it was shaped by her complex and often difficult relationship with her mother, Mary Roy. Objectively, this is a well-crafted book. The prose is beautiful, the structure is clear, and Roy has undoubtedly lived a significant life as both an artist and an activist. And yet, I'm just so over memoirs this year that I read it and thought, "This is a good book, moving on." I liked *Mother Mary: A Memoir* enough to finish it,...

Roy writes that she is puzzled and more than a little ashamed by the intensity of her response to her mother’s death, and I now have this same feeling about my reaction to *Mother Mary: A Memoir* 😭. Arundhati Roy's memoir really hit me hard. If you're looking for emotional book reviews, this one's for you.

When I conquer the world, every author I like will have to write a memoir. Seriously.Just look at the results!To be fair, at first, I wasn't completely hooked. Despite their clearly complicated relationship, Arundhati Roy obviously feels protective of her mixed memories of her mother—and in the initial pages covering her childhood, that protectiveness can make things feel a bit stilted, shallow, or just plain confusing.But as we delve deeper into Roy's life and she establishes both physical and ...

I find myself in a somewhat unique position. I just finished Arundhati Roy’s breathtaking (that is, reading it took my breath away!) memoir, Mother Mary: A Memoir, and yet I have not read anything she has previously written and published. My usual linearity-seeking compulsion is to read some, or all, books by an author, and *then* read a memoir or a solid, scholarly biography. I like to know what was going on in the author’s life when he or she wrote a particular book. Despite having turned my u...

The Booker Prize meant nothing to me until I read Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things; I finally understood it as a mark of true greatness because that incredible novel had won it. To this day, I judge Booker Prize winners by whether they measure up to the experience of reading about Estha, Rahel, and Pappachi's Moth – and very few ever do. Roy is known today not just for her brilliant fiction – screenplays like In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones and Electric Moon, which came before The Go...