Looking for Alibrandi

Looking for Alibrandi is the debut novel of author Melina Marchetta, published in 1992. Aimed at a Young Adult audience, it deals with issues of cultural identity, family, and patterns of behavior passed down through generations.

Josephine “Josie” Alibrandi is a 17-year-old girl living in Australia. Josie is of Italian descent, and is being raised by her mother, Christina, and her maternal grandmother, Katia, her Nonna. Josie is sarcastic and cynical. She rejects her cultural heritage and feels embarrassed when her grandmother tries to make her appreciate her Italian heritage. The story begins with Josie arguing with one of the teachers at the Catholic school she attends. Josie states that she has a good relationship with her mother, but resents her attempts to be strict, and she also resents her Nonna’s habit of disapproving everything she does and trying to enforce some cultural traditions. Josie does not have a relationship with her father, and her mother and grandmother are both very reticent on the subject.

Josie dislikes most of the other kids at her school, finding them snobbish and cliquish. She despises one girl in particular: Carly Bishop, who is ignorant and racist. She has a few close friends: Sara, Anna, and Lee. Josie has a crush on John Barton, son of a wealthy family, and a handsome star athlete at their brother school. Josie thinks John has everything, and the gulf between their social status is too great to bridge. When Josie gets home from school, her mother informs her that her father, Michael, is in town. At school the next day, Josie meets Jacob Coote, a boy from another school. He catches her eye when he makes a speech in public, confident and charming despite coming from a working class background. Jacob asks her out on a date, although they don’t seem to have much in common and clash frequently. Their first few dates, in fact, each end in disaster, but she continues to be drawn to him.



Josie meets with her father, who is a barrister and in town for a case. Michael insists he wasn’t aware that Christina had a daughter by him, and Josie is very rude to him. Michael becomes upset, and they make an angry agreement to stay out of each other’s lives. Josie, however, quickly breaks this promise when she becomes angry with Carly and hits her with a textbook. Carly’s father threatens to take Josie and her mother to court, and Josie calls Michael for help. He comes to the school and settles the matter, sparing Josie from the consequences of her actions, and she admits she might have been unfair to him. Michael offers her a job in his law office, and she accepts, coming to know her father better.

Josie and Jacob continue to date, but Josie meets John Barton and they strike up a friendship. John and Josie begin having lengthy conversations, and Josie realizes that John is very unhappy despite his many supposed advantages. He tells her he is very depressed, that this father wants him to follow in his footsteps and become a politician, an idea John hates. When John commits suicide, Josie is shocked and horrified. Jacob is there to comfort her, understanding that she has just lost a friend, and he saves her from an assault on the way home from John’s funeral, cementing their commitment to each other.

At her grandmother’s house, Josie confronts Nonna about her attitude, and Nonna confesses to Josie that she was very hard on her mother Christina when she became pregnant because she herself had gone through the same situation. She’d been very beautiful, and married a man she did not love. She had an affair with another man, becoming pregnant. Although Nonna was married, she did not love her husband, but remained in the loveless marriage for the sake of her reputation and her daughter’s well-being. As a result she was extremely angry when Christina got pregnant, and took her frustrations out on her daughter and granddaughter. She sacrificed her entire life for her daughter and felt that Christina was throwing that sacrifice away, even though she could not know about it. Josie is very angry to hear this, thinking her Nonna is a hypocrite.



Josie and Nonna’s relationship improves, however, as Josie reconsiders what she now knows. She begins to see Nonna as a strong woman who made hard choices, and sees how difficult that was for her. She begins to voluntarily adopt some of Nonna’s ways and beliefs. When Jacob suggests they love each other and should have sex before marriage, Josie refuses, thinking of Nonna and the lessons she can learn from both her mother and grandmother’s lives.

Josie must face her high school exams, which will go a long way towards determining her future, in the midst of all this drama. She finds herself relying on her family and Jacob in ways she’d never done before, and gets through the exams successfully, newly embracing her heritage and family.