Many readers will be familiar with the 1940s Ern Malley affair. Sydney poets James McAuley and Harold Stewart created the fictitious poet Ern Malley and his biography, sending a body of ‘his’ work, created in a day, choosing words and phrases at random, woven into nonsensical sentences, to Max Harris, publisher of Angry Penguins, a art and literary journal. The poems ostensibly had been found after Ern’s death by his sister, Ethel, who sent them to Harris. The hoax did not end well for Harris, who was charged with publishing obscene content, found guilty and fined five pounds. Whatever the public thought about the fictitious Ern Malley, it has fascinated artists and writers ever since. This novel is the latest work to use the story of the hoax, but be warned: Anyone reading it must suspend an enormous amount of disbelief.

The story is mostly told by Ethel Malley, a single woman living in Sydney. Her younger brother, Ern, has just died from Graves’ Disease. Ethel tells a totally believable story about her younger brother, their early life, the loss of both parents, and how she found Ern’s poetry collection hidden in a suitcase after his death. The story becomes complicated after the special Ern Malley edition of Angry Penguins was published in 1944, when two Sydney poets revealed they had sent the poems as a hoax, including the fabrication of Ethel Malley.

Orr maintains the fiction right to the last chapter, decades later, when all becomes clear. The novel is wordy, but so full of detail, that Ethel, like Ern, come to life. McAuley and Stewart would have been delighted by this book, but maybe not Max Harris.

Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville