Warning: do not operate Calypso songs before removing Ulysses’ strings

Review of Striven, by M T Burell, Litavis House Press, 2021, 248 pp.

If you are a feminist postmodern anthropologist and a cat lover, don’t read this book, it will make you angry. Or perhaps you definitely should. The narrator is definitely masculine, and politically incorrect, although not at all superficial.

My copy of the novel

The main character, Dak, will disturb you, but, after all, why are we reading novels? To comfy sit on the puff of our granitic beliefs? Or rather to be challenged? This is clearly a journey based on a true story, a portrait of a young man who wants to find his place in London, where the change from a blue to white-collar job eventually changes everything. I actually liked Judy a lot. She is his real friend, the woman’s voice to counterpart Dak’s journey from one Calypso to another. There are many references to literature, both belles-lettres and academic works alike, in a subtle and intriguing way. The author’s English style is vivid and alive, communicating in a fresh rhythm, suitable for short reading sessions without losing the whole picture: “Will there be a time of redemption? Will he who strives eventually be striven?”