Overview

• Roy frames her childhood as “a good cult” centered on a commanding Mother‑Guru figure whose authority structured home life.
• The book revisits Mary Roy’s creation of a progressive Kerala school that challenged gender norms and won broad local admiration.
• At 18, Roy severed contact with her mother and pursued architecture, poverty‑stricken years, screenwriting, and eventual literary success.
• The memoir links her upbringing to the oppositional political essays that drew sustained criticism from India’s right.
• Roy explains her long gap between novels as a choice to protect the freedom to live and write on her own terms, while her view of her mother ultimately softens.