For years, I've been hoping for Australian Gothic novels. I would not be so forward as to tell writers what to write, or even to suggest to them. Or, at least I wouldn't approach them one-on-one.

Instead, I'll put it here: Krissy Kneen would be my perfect choice to write Australian Gothic novels. She understands the different kinds of people who populate this land. She understands setting. She understands language. She understands the importance of history and future. She understands the scientific and paranormal. Read THE THREE BURIALS OF LOTTY KNEEN, and you'll agree. Although it is memoir (or non-fiction? I'm not good at categorising), reading about Dragonhall and the family secrets...

So, yeah. Just putting it out there: Krissy Kneen, Australian Gothic is totally your wheelhouse. Thank you.

Krissy Kneen’s grandmother Lotty ruled her family with an iron fist. Her two daughter and two granddaughters were controlled in every aspect of their lives and were never allowed to ask questions about the family's past, particularly not Lotty’s own past. Lotty had set up a tourist attraction called Dragonhall in Australia that no one ever visited, and the family lived pretty much in isolation. After Lotty’s death, Krissy Kneen felt freed to explore her grandmother's past and find answers to the questions that Lotty refused to answer. Her voyage of discovery and self-discovery takes her first to Lotty’s native Slovenia where she learns the history of the Aleksandrinkes, a term applied to the girls and women of the Goriska region who went to Egypt, in particular to Alexandria, to work primarily as nannies for the wealthy Egyptian and ex-pat community, often leaving their own babies and children behind, sometimes never seeing them again for decades. This is itself is a fascinating story, one I’d never heard of, and I was glad to find an excellent documentary on Vimeo – I recommend it. Lotty herself was one such Aleksandrinke, and this takes Krissy on yet another journey, as she continues to explore her family’s past and legacy. Krissy Kneen is a poet and sometimes I found her prose style overwritten, but once I’d settled into the book I found myself more and more drawn into the story, finding it compelling and often moving. Family secrets, trauma, the search for identity, inheritance and heritage, all are explored with insight and compassion to make this an absorbing and powerful read.

Krissy Kneen’s latest memoir provided me with a wonderful reading experience. Part loving tribute to her fierce, secretive grandmother, and part genealogical mystery, it gave me an insight to a family quite different from my own and to a 20th century cultural phenomenon that I knew nothing about; the Aleksandrinke of the Goriška region of Slovenia.

So close in life that Krissy called her grandmother ‘Mum’, it was only in death that Krissy felt able to delve into the past of her family’s formidable matriarch. Throughout her childhood she’d been granted access to only the sketchiest details of her grandmother Lotty’s life - from Slovenia, lived and married in Egypt, escaped to Britain during the 1950s on account of her husband’s British passport, settled in Australia. Having developed her own theories, she starts with a DNA test, but the result simply widens the mystery. Accompanied by her life partner, Krissy arranges to travel to Slovenia for 3 months to dig deeper. Here she learns about the women of Goriška and the economic migration of the early 20th century, largely to Alexandria, that was so substantial it spawned a name for the participants - the Aleksandrinke. When a chance encounter provides her with the opportunity to travel safely to Egypt, she decides to take it, to see who and what else she can find there.

I love a genealogical mystery, and reading this book was a bit like watching an extended and gripping episode of one of those TV shows where the celebrity discovers their origins. Krissy is smart and eloquent, but also extremely vulnerable as she goes on this emotional journey. It’s far from smooth sailing, and not all loose ends are neatly tied, but I was infinitely satisfied with what her research uncovered and what I learned along the way. I can only hope that she was somewhat satisfied too. Well done, Krissy!

A powerful yet not easy read. If you're interested in beautifully detailed personal and family histories, you will love this book. Krissy Kneen goes as deep as possible into her Grandmother's mysterious life. There's even a delicious sounding recipe along the way. This book took me a while to get into but halfway through, I was hooked. I'd never heard of the Alexandrinke before and now I want to learn more about these amazing & brave women.

‘Where does this story begin?’

Krissy Kneen’s grandmother Lotty (born Dragitsa) did not share much information about her early life and family history. Krissy always wanted to know more about her family but did not feel able to explore her history while her grandmother was still alive. Family histories are often complicated, especially if someone wants to forget or hide or escape from the past. Her grandmother did not want her to travel to Slovenia to explore the past. Who was Lotty Kneen, and what shaped her life? And why was this quest so important to Krissy?

‘Names hold power. My own name is not my birth name, just as my grandmother’s name is not the one she was given.’

With a box containing her grandmother’s ashes, Krissy Kneen set out to trace her grandmother’s early life in Slovenia and Egypt. Perhaps she would find other family members as well. What follows is a complicated, partial unravelling of Lotty’s life. Three countries, three lives, three burials. Lotty belongs in Slovenia, in Egypt, in Australia. And, as Krissy Kneen undertook her journey, she learns more about her grandmother and her own history.

This book is a journey of both discovery and memory. Krissy Kneen learns about her grandmother’s unknown past and remembers the woman she knew. The family dynamics are complex, the family history is full of mystery. Some facts emerge, but the reason behind some actions remains elusive.

‘Memory is all about overlapping versions of the truth. It is an unwinding.’

Reading this book, I gain an impression of Lotty Kneen of a strong, determined woman, keen to protect her family. Krissy Kneen has honoured her, by travelling back into the past and by consigning a portion of her ashes in countries where she lived and where her life was shaped. And now I want to read ‘Affection’ (Ms Kneen’s memoir published in 2010) to learn more about her family.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Text Publishing for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

It took me a while to sort out the story. In the beginning the author is all,over the place, deviating from the main narrative with side road siphons, which made the story choppy. Kneen’s family history is a snarled ball yarn. The more she tugs on a loose end, the tighter the ball becomes. I was frustrated when members of her family refused to divulge family history. She had to travel thousands of miles to unravel the stories. I did like the book. Sleuthing for family history Is one of my favorite genres to read. Kneen’s family history is certainly diverse.

The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen is a captivating glimpse into the complexities of family dynamics, and one woman's quest to finally know her grandmother. When Lotty Kneen dies, her granddaughter Krissy is left with unanswered questions about her family's history. For all her grandmother's prowess at storytelling, she had never tolerated Krissy's curiosity to know more about her family's past, even forbidding her plans to travel and learn more.

While there are many elements here to love, Kneen's ability to turn unanswered questions into fairy tale-like stories, beautiful in their brutality, is a masterclass in writing, and an unmissable reading experience. Her ability to show complex, at times uncomfortable family dynamics with empathy and grace makes for an unforgettable journey towards understanding, and accepting, a flawed and fierce woman who'd played so vital a part in Krissy's life.

The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen is an ideal memoir for lovers of rich, compelling storytelling and family mysteries.

The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen by Krissy Kneen really intrigued me by the description. Family history is something that always intrigues me. I have not read Kneen’s previous work, Affection, but I do not think it is necessary as Kneen goes over the essentials in this book anyway. The book is divided into three parts, each representing a different journey for both Krissy and Lotty, spiritually and geographically; starting in Australia, travelling to Slovenia, and then ending in Egypt. I felt like this was a book that was necessary for Krissy Kneen to write as a process of grief and it is a deeply personal story to her. As much as I loved the storytelling, the language, the descriptions and the myths in the first part of the book, the other two parts really declined.

Part one of The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen held a lot of vivid imagery and many interesting aspects of storytelling, especially concerning fairytales and how such stories had such a deep impact on Krissy’s family life. Kneen describes how it was like growing up mostly around females (her grandmother, mother, aunt, and sister) with small mentions of her father and grandfather. Lotty Kneen was seen as a strict and protecting matriarchal figure, keeping everyone in her family protected and isolated from the world in a remote part of Australia. I wish Kneen had gone deeper into her family life here, as I feel like the information we were given was vague and the same elements were repeated. Similarly, I had hoped to learn more information with the male figures of the family and what had happened to them, how their presence impacted the household, but their presence was only mentioned in passing, and we never found out why Lotty Kneen wanted to avoid men for herself and her family. The Slovenian myths were extremely interesting and sprinkled throughout the book, adding a few more details every time they were mentioned, I also liked how Kneen speculated how her previous relatives must have lived in the past in a story-like manner. Kneen places a lot of attention on biology of the cells and the atoms that compose us; which I felt was unnecessary, if not a repeated theme that did not add much to the story.

From part two onwards, in which Krissy Kneen herself embarks on a journey of self-discovery, the writing style drastically changes and it feels as if I was reading someone’s travel blog, with a few findings of her family history and line sprinkled throughout. I appreciate that this was also about Krissy as much as it was about Lotty, however, many of the comments of her travels I saw as unnecessary as they were thoughts on how well they had travelled or how the places made her feel. When Kneen does find anecdotes relating to her family, it feels as if it was information that she had already gathered. I did find it amazing however the luck that Kneen had in finding people that knew of or were actual blood relatives to her, and how they could expand on the mysterious family tree, but no new information about Lotty’s mysterious past was actually revealed.

I did appreciate and found interesting the forgotten history of the Aleksandrinke women, Slovenian women who had to leave their country and families to be nannies for Egyptian women, specifically in Alexandria, to send money back to their families. The history of these women are rarely talked about, and it is interesting how they were painted in a negative way by those back in their homelands as they were seen to ‘abandon’ their families, when these women were the ones supporting their families. With this in mind, we find that Kneen’s great-grandmother was an Aleksandrinke, who was able to bring her children to Egypt with her. However, we never find out anything about their personal story and how Lotty Kneen spent her formative years there, and why she never wanted to return or if she had any bad encounters.

I’m disappointed because the first part of this book started out extremely strong, only to fall afterwards and never get back up. Once Kneen spreads the last few ashes of her grandmother in Egypt, she does not conclude on how this journey of self-discovery has made her feel, this being strange as this was the whole reason she went. It does not end on any reflective thoughts or changed views of her grandmother, maybe because in the end we still never really knew who Lotty Kneen was.

I would recommend this book for people who share a similar history with Kneen about trying to connect pieces of their mysterious family members, or if someone is interested in the Aleksandrinke movement. Also to note, the pacing of the book can jump from the past, present, and to some small stories and myths, but I think this was done well and was not confusing. Yet I would only recommend part one as it was the most enjoyable and beautifully written part of this book.