Sincerely, Ethel Malley

- Blurb -

In the darkest days of World War II, Ethel Malley lives a quiet life on Dalmar Street, Croydon. One day she finds a collection of poems written by her late (and secretive) brother, Ern. She sends them to Max Harris, co-editor of modernist magazine Angry Penguins. He reads them and declares Ern an undiscovered genius. Determined to help publish the poems, Ethel moves in with Max and soon becomes a presence he can' t understand, or control. He gets the feeling something' s not quite right. About Ethel. About Ern. Then two poets come forward claiming they wrote Ern' s poems. What follows is part-truth, part-hoax, a dark mystery as surreal as any of Ern' s poems. Max wants to believe in Ern, but to do this he has to believe in Ethel, and attempt to understand her increasingly unpredictable behaviour. Then he' s charged with publishing Ern' s ' pornographic' poems. The questions of truth and lies, freedom of speech, and tradition versus modernism play out in a stifling Adelaide courtroom, around the nation' s wirelesses, and in Max' s head. Based on Australia' s greatest literary hoax, Sincerely, Ethel Malley explores the nature of creativity, and human frailty. It drips with the anaemic blood of Australian literature, the gristle of a culture we' ve never really trusted.