Plumptre's Livelihood Methods

No Bullshit is an apt title. For sincerely there are no mincing of words or sugar-coating of the truth in this volume to be followed by subsequent issues. It’s the world as it is. Natural and Stark. Indeed it is fluid prose that tackles living in itself with admixtures of commentaries and exposition that still gives room to the place for rhetorics.

Although the view is invariably tilted to a feminine perspective, this book boycotts clichés and the author constantly seeks new ways of re-presenting the mundane. It is fresh both in handling and outlook as what the author seeks to do is carry readers along whilst expressing her opinionated ideas as succinctly as permissible.

And the book is pretty much about anything. Everything. Nothing, even. As it seeks to touch all the details of life. In this, it cuts some bias and some views are slack, vague and even ambiguous but the author is quick to write in a caveat, that the words are essentially hers and the world, which she illustrates, is the one in which she functions.

The book is divided into several monologues tagged “Disclosures”. And each monologues, although uneven in text content, often disclose the author‘s views especially on marriage, relationships, family, sex, friendship, etc. These are often interspersed with poems, titled “freestyles” and some thematic photographic images which depict moods and often hint content at a glance.

No Bullshit is personal as well as artistic, as various art forms are dabbled into to achieve a collagist impression, a beautification of the mundane. It can easily be termed the sophistication of the simple. And Plumptre’s style of prose is exceptionally conversational; the language is accessible, not quite far-fetched, as she picked everyday diction and painstakingly composed them into several personal essays that could have been excerpts of an impersonal diary.

And this book is timely, necessary and should be accepted, even though it enunciates just a single female’s view. Plumptre, although does not cut across as a stereotype female, is an interesting voice that should be heard, as her yearnings, her innermost desires, draws parallels and cuts across the entire female gender.

She often does not proffer solutions and even when she does, she does not force them on her readers. Plumptre essentially wrote this book for herself. In her own words, she wrote that she writes “to simply escape”. She further said she writes because reality is subjective and the ideals only exist for a few moments when we choose to allow it to”. And so readers would do well to subject the ideas espoused in this book to there are own ideals and live by leaving reality to take its hold on them.