Love and Relationships Theme Analysis

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. Rather, it suggests that even short-lived relationships can be fulfilling when they’re fueled by love, respect, and the willingness to better oneself.

Looking for Alibrandi shows that relationships often arise to fill gaps in a person’s life. Nonna shares with Josie that she embarked on her relationship with Marcus Sandford because her husband, Josie’s grandfather Nonno, treated her so poorly. Where Nonno barely seemed to notice that he was married to a beautiful woman 15 years younger than him and treated Nonna “like a farm animal,” Marcus Sandford treated Nonna with kindness, respect, and gentleness. Nonna acknowledges that she had a choice when she first slept with Marcus—but she also suggests that it was an easy choice to make, given how unappreciated and unloved she felt in her marriage. Mama, too, turned to Michael as a teenager to cope with her difficult relationship with Nonno, who she grew up believing was her father. Nonno resented Mama and treated her poorly throughout her childhood, but Mama never understood why. Both Mama and Michael either imply or say outright that Mama entered into a romantic and sexual relationship with Michael in part to make up for the fact that Nonno didn’t seem to love her—it was important to her, as a teen, to connect with a man who would love and appreciate her.

The novel also shows that relationships are learning experiences, and that—more than how long they last—is what makes them meaningful. During Nonna and Marcus Sandford’s relationship, for instance, Marcus taught Nonna English—he was one of the only white Australians who would speak with Nonna. They were able to share some of their respective cultures and traditions with the other, thereby expanding each other’s worlds. As the novel’s narrator, Josie’s experience of dating Jacob receives the most attention—and the most in-depth exploration of how she and Jacob teach each other new things. And Josie’s experience shows that learning new things in a romantic relationship can be emotionally challenging. It’s extremely frustrating for her when Jacob first refuses to meet Mama, and then agrees to meet her but doesn’t take it seriously. Jacob ultimately comes around and eventually even asks to meet Nonna, though he never does. Being more connected to a partner’s family, Jacob learns, isn’t ridiculous—it can give him important information about his partner. From Jacob, Josie discovers that class isn’t everything. Jacob wants to be a mechanic, a profession Josie had never even thought about before meeting him. This shows Josie that her path (a prestigious high school, a college degree, and a professional job) isn’t the only valuable path. Through her relationship with Jacob, she develops empathy for other working-class people (of which she is one) and learns that being a “laborer,” as she and her classmates call it, isn’t anything shameful.

Finally, the novel makes it very clear that relationships don’t have to continue long-term to have a positive effect on a person’s life. Both Nonna and Mama, for instance, conceived babies as a result of their relationships. Nonna desperately wanted to have children as a young woman and only discovered after becoming pregnant with Mama that Nonno had lied to her and couldn’t father children. So her short-lived relationship with Marcus got her the one thing she wanted most: a daughter. And though Mama wasn’t ready to be a parent when she and Michael conceived Josie, Mama nevertheless makes it very clear to Josie on numerous occasions that she doesn’t regret the relationship, and definitely doesn’t regret Josie. In the novel’s final chapter, Josie suggests that she and Jacob taught each other some very important lessons as well: she thinks that Jacob has become more ambitious as a result of their relationship (he insists he’d like to do more with his life than become just another working-class mechanic), while Josie has become less ambitious. This, she makes clear, is a good thing—her decreased ambition means that she’s able to look to her future in law with hope and happiness, rather than fear and anxiety. And though she’s certainly sad when Jacob breaks up with her at the end of the novel, she makes a point to focus on the fact that he did change her outlook for the better. No relationship that ends, the novel suggests, is worthless or a bad thing, provided that relationship was happy and fulfilling while it lasted, and taught its participants something new.