Mother Mary Comes to Me

Before we talk about Roy's mother, tell us one small thing about a woman who raised you: a phrase she repeated, a dish she made, a rule she would not bend.

Where did you read this one, and did you find yourself reading it in small sips or in one long sitting? What did the book's pace do to your evenings?

This is a love story told by someone who was also exhausted by the person she loves. Which passage made you soften toward Roy's mother, even if you had just been annoyed with her?

Roy writes Kerala with heat, rain, water and church bells all pressing in. Which sense stayed with you longest, and did any of it remind you of a place you grew up in?

The book moves between a daughter who is a child and a daughter who is a famous adult. Which version of that voice did you most want to put a blanket around?

Roy's mother built a school and insisted on her own terms in a world that preferred quiet women. How did reading about that kind of stubbornness make you feel: thrilled, tired, both?

By the last pages, had your sense of what Roy was forgiving (or refusing to forgive) shifted? Talk about the feeling that arrived in you, not what happens on the page.

If you could sit with your own complicated person for one hour and say one true, kind thing, what would it be? This book seems to want that from its readers.