Family Theme Analysis

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 what it was like being an Italian immigrant in Australia in the 1930s and 40s. To make things even worse for Josie, her long-lost father, Michael Andretti, moves back to Sydney at the beginning of the school year and learns that Josie is his daughter. At first, Josie sees family as something constricting, controlling, and burdensome. But particularly as Josie becomes closer to Nonna, learns some family secrets, and accepts Michael into her life, she gradually comes to see that family can be a source of love and sacrifice—and that one’s family can grow to accommodate new members.

At first, Josie believes that her family’s sole purpose is to make her feel inadequate and stifled. Josie has dealt with this feeling for much of her life—and even before she was born. When, as a teenager, Mama revealed she was pregnant out of wedlock, Josie’s very traditional and overbearing grandfather, Nonno, kicked Mama out of his home and refused to ever meet baby Josie. He died about a decade before the novel begins, and it was only at that point that Mama and Josie were accepted back into the fold. So Josie has grown up seeing firsthand that family isn’t always supportive or loving—indeed, she was deprived of even knowing much of her extended family until the time of Nonno’s death. In the present, Josie’s family makes her feel inadequate in a different way. During the afternoons she spends with Nonna after school, Josie feels like Nonna constantly picks on her for being “untidy” and “disrespectful.” Josie finds Nonna’s constant criticism grating, and it makes her feel like Nonna doesn’t truly love her or Mama (Nonna insists it’s Mama’s fault that Josie is so supposedly disrespectful). And because of this, Josie intends to get as far away from her family as possible when she grows up. In her mind, she can only become who she wants to be if she’s free of their stifling expectations of her.

Part of the reason that Josie feels so distanced from Nonna in particular is because she believes she and Nonna have nothing in common. Josie’s primary complaint about Nonna is that Nonna is old—Josie sees elderly people in general as out of touch and boring. She attributes much of Nonna’s obnoxious behavior, such as insisting on respect and tidiness, to Nonna’s age. But more than this, Josie also resents Nonna for going along with it when Nonno chose to kick Mama out years ago. Despite Josie’s qualms about her extended family, she’s extremely close to Mama and believes that her grandparents committed an unspeakable crime by kicking Mama out when she became pregnant as a teen. Josie insists at several points that she would’ve never kicked Mama out had she been in Nonna and Nonno’s position. This gives Josie an even stronger sense that she and Nonna are irreconcilably different.

However, as Josie begins to grow closer to Nonna, she discovers that she and Nonna aren’t actually so different—and that they can deepen their relationship as they learn how similar they actually are. As Josie listens to Nonna’s stories of being a boy-crazy teen and immigrating to Australia immediately after her marriage to Nonno at 17, Josie can’t help but wonder how alike she and Nonna actually are—17-year-old Josie, like 17-year-old Nonna, is very interested in boys. And especially when Josie discovers that Nonno isn’t actually Mama’s father (Nonna had an affair with an Australian man named Marcus Sandford that resulted in Mama) Josie suddenly has to confront the possibility that Nonna isn’t as boring as she thought. Nonna, just like Josie, was once young, made questionable choices, and didn’t follow her community’s rules. Even more meaningful for Josie, though, is the fact that learning the truth about Mama’s paternity sheds light on the family’s relationship with Nonno and the circumstances surrounding Josie’s birth. Josie learns that Nonno resented Mama because she wasn’t his biological daughter. Though he agreed to raise Mama as his own, he did so on the condition that Nonna didn’t “embarrass” him again, putting Nonna in a very difficult position. Nonna’s distant relationship with Mama, Josie comes to realize, is so distant because Nonna feared retaliation if she were to actually be close to her daughter. So when Mama became pregnant with Josie, Nonna didn’t feel like she could safely or successfully advocate for Mama and thus allowed Nonna to kick Mama out.

Learning these family secrets makes it incredibly clear to Josie see that what’s most important in a family is love and support, not formal ties like marriage. Learning about Nonno’s cruelty starts to diminish his importance in Josie’s mind, even though he’s technically her grandfather. But on the other hand, figures like Marcus and Michael—who are biological members of the family, but aren’t bound to the Alibrandis by marriage—start to take on more importance. As Michael and Josie’s relationship improves, Josie realizes it’s silly to resent Michael for leaving Mama when they were 17; rather, it’s healthier to focus on the fact that, in the present, Michael wants to be around for Josie and support her through her final year of high school. With this, the novel suggests that the way family members treat each other is far more meaningful than how exactly family members are related.