The King's Head by Susan Price, author of award-winning The Ghost Drum and The Sterkarm Handshake, consists of a sequence of linked stories of promises broken and kept. The storyteller (or skald) is the head of Egil Grimmssen, who was slain in battle and has his own promise to his king to keep.

Egil's tale of his former life is one of sibling rivalry, success and betrayal. Betrayal is also the theme of the story about St. Kenelm, together with justice tempered by mercy. The head tries to cheer up Osyth, a young woman melancholy about growing up, with "a silly tale of a tail", in which a mouse does not keep his promise to a cat, and a hilarious, self-conscious tall story much concerned with truth and lies. Egil also tells Osyth about a serving-girl who keeps a gory promise and prospers, and about the mystery of a farmer's daughter's phantom pregnancy and reluctance to marry. At court, the head first recounts how a goose-girl's cunning saves a prince from trows; and then weaves a mystery about the background of a successful and pretty serving-man. Finally Egil is allowed to tell his defeated king the story he promised him, which is about the search for wisdom. The talking head, with its powerful mythic resonances, is a device Susan Price has used before, in Head and Tales.

The tales in The King's Head have an earthy sense of humour and are always gripping. There are stories within stories within stories, games with reality and lies (compare with Susan Price's earlier collection, Here Lies Price), and echoes which give an elusive feel of familiarity. And there is a sense of oral tradition, each telling being different, as Egil speaks to different addressees who negotiate the telling with him. The reader too has the pleasure of actively and consciously being in dialogue with the storying.

2007-12-29