Looking for Alibrandi Themes

Looking for Alibrandi follows a 17-year-old Australian girl named Josie as she prepares to take the exams for her High School Certificate (HSC) at the end of the school year. Josie lives with her Mama: a single mother who had Josie at age 17, much to the chagrin of Josie’s grandmother, Nonna. Josie detests having to see Nonna every day after school, as Nonna annoyingly always wants to talk about the past and…

Josie frames the events of Looking for Alibrandi as the story of her “emancipation.” She tells readers that when she turns 18, she desperately wants to escape her tight-knit Italian family and community and become a barrister (lawyer). This, in her mind, would allow her to be able to leave behind her family’s outdated expectations and a gossip mill that can ruin people’s lives. However, over the course of the novel, Josie’s idea of what…

At 17 years old, Josie is very concerned with what her peers think of her. She dreams of being popular at school and eventually, of being wealthy and influential in adulthood—but for a variety of reasons, Josie fears she’s never going to achieve these dreams. Both Mama and Josie’s grandmother, Nonna, meanwhile, are very tuned in to their Italian community’s gossip mill—and, in Josie’s opinion, are far too afraid of what people might say…

Seventeen-year-old Josie is extremely caught up in the differences between people of different social classes. As someone of a lower social class (her single mother is a second-generation Italian immigrant) who nevertheless attends a prestigious high school on a scholarship, Josie fears that she’s never going to fit in with the popular, wealthy girls at her school. So Josie’s goal for much of the novel is to attain wealth and prestige once she’s an adult—she…

Looking for Alibrandi follows three major relationships: the one in the present between Josie and Jacob; the past and present relationship between Mama and Josie’s absent father, Michael Andretti; and the 1950s affair between Nonna and a white Australian man, Marcus Sandford. Through these relationships—none of which are lasting in that they don’t result in marriage—Looking for Alibrandi suggests that longevity isn’t the only marker of a healthy or meaningful relationship…