Arundhati Roy covers similar material in her sensational memoir. Mother Mary Comes to Me is dedicated to her mother, a “typically unpredictable” woman from whom Roy spent many years estranged. Mary Roy was a teacher, advocate and passionate community leader who was hailed as a feminist icon in Kerala, where she lived undaunted by chauvinistic social codes. Yet she also terrorised her family and colleagues, whom she would entrap in codependent relationships in which she would erode their sense of worth.