Book Discussion: Mother Mary Comes to Me (2025) by Arundhati Roy

In this unsparing, darkly funny memoir, award-winning novelist Arundhati Roy captures her complex relationship with her fierce and formidable mother who shaped Roy’s life as a writer and activist yet left her emotionally bruised. Named one of the top ten books of 2025 by the New York Times Book Review, Roy’s raw, sometimes disturbing narrative takes its title from the Beatles song “Let It Be” and attempts to make sense of her complicated feelings in the aftermath of her mother Mary’s death. Themes from this intellectually stimulating and emotionally riveting book include family relationships, intergenerational violence, colonialism's legacy, religious persecution, environmental sustainability, free speech, and more.