‘The Lesser Horsemen’ – Keith Rosson (From ‘Folk Songs For Trauma Surgeons: Stories’)

 


Page Count: 17 Pages

My journey, through this week, continues with another short story that I managed to squeeze in, last night, between bouts of looking for my youngest daughter’s Geography school book. I finished off ‘The Lesser Horsemen’ but I’ve got no idea where her school book is; oh well.. That’s a 50% success rate, I’ll take it.

Anyway. Sometimes you can go for ages, reading books that are perfectly fine (even brilliant) but aren’t quite the right book at the right time. And sometimes… Sometimes you find yourself reading a short story that turns out to be exactly the right story at exactly the right time. And that’s what happened to me when I picked up ‘Folk Songs For Trauma Surgeons: Stories’, opened it up and started reading ‘The Lesser Horsemen’.

Three out of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse can’t stand each other, the fourth is off pursuing an inevitable solo career but God really needs the other three to buckle down and work together. It’s time for a week’s cruise and some serious team-building work…

I’ve sat through a few team-building exercises in my time, generally because there’s an inevitable change on the horizon and management have to be seen to be managing it. Cynical? Maybe… Like I said, I’ve sat through a few of these ;o) Even my jaded soul though, would perk up at the thought of sharing ‘seminar space’ with the actual Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, well… three of them. ‘The Lesser Horsemen’ is the closest I’ll get and in the hands of Keith Rosson, it proved to be a fascinating experience, veering away from the comedy that I was expecting and heading into surprisingly thoughtful territory.

If you work in an office, you already know what it’s like; I’m not going to tell you again ;o) Rosson really captures the relentless pressure of team dynamics, and office politics, by giving us three ‘colleagues’ who have been in the same jobs for literally thousands of years. We’d all love a bit of job security but that much…? I don’t know… Anyway, Rosson takes that dynamic to its inevitable breaking point and then shows us that not only is the ability to embrace change necessary in the workplace, it can also lead to a much healthier work/life balance. There’s a lesson that I could do with learning and the fact that it’s delivered by Pestilence, of all ‘people’ adds a delicious hint of ‘weirdness’ that kept me fully engaged the whole way through. And after last night, that was just what I needed ;o)

If ‘The Lesser Horsemen’ is the standard of tale in ‘Folk Songs’ then I won’t leave it too long before I read the rest of the book. It’s also a reminder that I really need to add ‘Coffin Moon; to the ‘Immediate TBR Pile’. I’ll go and do that now ;o)

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