Mother Mary Comes to Me
- Published: 4 September 2025
- ISBN: 9781405978484
- Imprint: Penguin eBooks
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 384
Brave and absorbing . . . In this remarkable memoir, the Booker-winning novelist looks back on her bittersweet relationship with her mercurial mother . . . The world described in the first part of the book provides much of the material for The God of Small Things. But these pages aren’t significant for giving us access to Roy’s inspiration, or as a preamble to her life as a bestselling writer who would go on to become an oppositional political voice. Even if she were none of these things or had never written her novel, they would be utterly absorbing. They have a wonderful, self-assured self-sufficiency
Guardian
The book has the lyricism of Gabriel García Márquez, the political sweep of Barbara Kingsolver, and the antic family humour of David Sedaris
Financial Times
The best piece of non-fiction she has ever written
The Telegraph
Feels like the best kind of fiction
The Economist
Sharp, irreverent, wickedly funny . . . unsettling, bruising, often brutal, yet ultimately life-affirming
BBC News
Beautifully written . . . It is a total pleasure to spend time with Arundhati Roy’s mind and memory in this funny, wise, candid and perceptive memoir
Independent, 'Book of the Month' (5 stars)
Arundhati Roy writes in characteristically dazzling prose . . . This memoir teems with irreverent humour and acerbic, often brilliant insights
Irish Independent