Summary
Chapter 1
The novel opens at St. Martha’s school for girls, where Josephine Alibrandi, a young Italian-Australian, is in her last and most critical year of high school. This year is critical because of the High School Certificate (HSC), a series of nation-wide exams that can determine a student’s future. Today is the first day of school, and Josie is already getting in trouble with her teachers. It’s first period, and she gets caught reading a teen magazine in her religion class by Sister Gregory. Josie does her best to talk her way out of trouble, but Sister Gregory doesn’t buy her elaborate explanation. She confiscates the magazine, and tells Josie to get it back from Sister Louise, the school principal. After class, Josie’s friends Anna, Sera, and Lee tease her about getting in trouble. Josie pledges to herself that this school year she’ll be a saint, but admits she generally does keep her pledges.
At this point Josie gives us a rundown of who she is and where she comes from. She’s 17 years old and lives in Glebe, a suburb outside the Sydney city center. At home it’s just her and her mother Christina, and the two of them have a good yet erratic relationship. One minute they’re best friends, the other they’re yelling at each other. Another important person in her life is her grandmother, Nonna Katia, who constantly badgers Christina about how she’s raising Josie. When the three women get together, Josie compares it to World War III. Still, her sometimes hectic family life is only one of Josie’s problems. The other is her school, which is filled predominantly with rich and affluent students and families. Josie won a six-year scholarship to St. Martha’s, and from day one she’s felt disadvantaged, partly because of her lack of money, but also because of her cultural background.
Her grandmother may have been born in Italy, but both Christina and Josie were born in Australia, which makes Josie a second-generation Australian. This places her in the middle of two very different communities, neither of which fully accepts her. Furthermore, her mother had her at age 16 out of wedlock, which is very taboo in the Italian community, and among her peers at St. Martha’s. Though it’s been years since her classmates have mentioned her illegitimacy, Josie is convinced they still talk about it behind her back, which makes her feel even more like an outsider.
After school Josie goes straight home instead of to her grandmother’s house like she’s supposed to. At home she talks briefly to Gary, one of her neighbors, and waits for her mother to come home. When Christina gets home from work, Josie notes that she looks worried. The mother and daughter bicker over dinner about Josie’s antics with her friends, which got reported back to Nonna Katia by the Italian gossip grapevine. Josie figures her mother is in a bad mood because Christina went to visit Nonna Katia, which could apparently put even Mother Teresa in a bad mood. The two go back and forth discussing their days, until Christina suggests they take a trip for Easter. This immediately puts Josie on edge, because her mother has never allowed them to go on a holiday.
Josie begins to freak out and goes to bed early, but cannot forget her mother’s odd behavior. When she confronts her mother, the truth comes out. Visiting at Nonna Katia’s house was Michael Andretti, Josie’s biological father who they haven’t heard from since Christina became pregnant. This news shocks Josie, but she’s worried mostly about her mother, not her own feelings. The two discuss Michael Andretti and how they should handle the situation. Josie is convinced they can simply ignore and avoid him, but Christina wisely says it won’t be so easy. Josie asks what he looks like, and Christina says a male Josephine Alibrandi, which makes both women laugh.
Chapter 2
Two days pass after Christina’s bombshell about Michael Andretti, and it is “Have a Say Day,” a gathering of different schools in the area where students can articulate their opinions. Josie and her three friends are riding together to the event, and Josie takes the time to describe her group in detail. The four girls make up an unlikely group, as the other groups at their school are clones of one another. Each of the girls represent a different niche at St. Martha’s, but they came together because they felt excluded from the other groups. Another important classmate is Ivy Lloyd, who Josie nicknamed “Poison Ivy” because of their competitive relationship.
The girls get a ride to “Have a Say Day” with Angelo Pezzini, Sera’s reckless boyfriend. Sister Louise and Ivy watch in disapproval as the girls exit the car, late to the event. Sister Louise tells Josie she’ll be making a speech on behalf of St. Martha’s, and Josie joins the other student leaders. Among the group is Jacob Coote, the school captain from Cook High. Cook High is a public school close to St. Martha’s, and their students frequently tease and pester St. Martha’s students. Jacob teases and tries to talk to Josie, but she ignores him until he goes and gives an impassioned speech about the civic duty of voting. Jacob’s speech impresses everyone, even Josie, who develops a slight crush on him. Later at home Poison Ivy is featured in the news coverage of “Have a Say Day.” Josie admits to herself that as much as she hates Ivy, she longs to be a part of her world.
Chapter 3
One day in February Josie goes to her grandmother’s house. Nonna Katia continually fusses over Josie, which irritates her, and complains that Josie and Christina won’t move in with her. Josie recalls how Nonna Katia and the rest of the family ostracized Christina when she became pregnant, and believes this is one reason why Christina refuses to live with her mother. Josie remembers one particular incident where her grandmother’s cousin and her daughter called her a “bastarda,” and her next door bully Greg Sims explaining to her what that meant. As all these memories race through her mind, Josie and her grandmother get into a bitter argument about Christina and respect. Nonna Katia blames Josie’s rudeness on Christina because she believes a daughter’s behavior is a reflection of how her mother raised her. When Josie replies that Katia must have been a bad mother too, considering the life Christina has now, Nonna Katia tells Josie to leave her house. As Josie goes to leave, in walks Michael Andretti.
Josie’s father is not what she expected. He’s short, not particularly good-looking, but he looks like a strong person. At first, it seems he doesn’t know who Josie is, but when she tells him Christina had her at a young age, the dots begin to connect. After dropping that bomb, Josie leaves. As she heads home, Josie thinks about her brief meeting with her father and her argument with her grandmother. As always when she fights with her family, she resolves that once she’s 18 she’ll run away from them and their rules. She’ll run to be emancipated, if her society will let her.
Analysis
Looking for Albrandi establishes itself as a bildungsroman from the novel’s first pages. Our heroine is Josephine Alibrandi, a strong but sometimes insecure teenager from Australia who is struggling to find herself as a second-generation immigrant. Josie getting caught taking a quiz from a teen magazine is a comedic yet clever metaphor for her struggles thus far in life. Even as she strives for self-discovery and emancipation, an authority figure in her life gets in her way. As the title suggests, the central conflict of Looking for Alibrandi will be Josie’s struggles to accept her cultural background, to find herself, and to forge her own path. The novel is told in the first person narrative voice, which allows the reader to connect with Josie on a personal and intimate level.
The format of the story is a series of linear vignettes from Josie’s life. Each chapter is a new “day in the life,” where Josie gets into a scrape, experiences a funny or important event, or learns a life lesson. New characters are introduced as the chapters go on, as we see in these first three chapters where Josie’s friends, Nonna Katia, Josie’s mom, Michael Andretti, and Jacob Coote are introduced. Josie has different relationships and a different way of acting with all these characters, which further demonstrates that she is in the process of discovering who she truly is.
Even in these first three chapters alone a multitude of the novel’s central themes are introduced. The first one is the theme of feeling like an outsider. Josie attends St. Martha’s, a private all-girls Catholic school for the rich and affluent. As a second generation Italian-Australian scholarship student born out of wedlock to a single mother, Josie feels disadvantaged and ostracized among her wealthy, well-bred peers. From the moment she arrived at St. Martha’s, the other girls made it clear she didn’t belong, because of her lack of wealth, her illegitimacy, and her “ethnic” background (Marchetta 14). Classmates like Poison Ivy make Josie feel like she’ll never succeed and become part of affluent Australian society, even though she’s as smart as them. Josie and her mother Christina are not fully accepted in the Italian community either, in part because of Christina’s teenage pregnancy, but also because they were born in Australian, not Italy. So Josie is stuck between two worlds, not accepted by one and rejected by the other.
Josie feeling like an outsider amongst Australians and Italians has led to a shaky sense of self. As already discussed in reference to the book’s central conflict and title, Josie’s path to discovering who she really is is another core theme of Looking for Alibrandi. The arrival of Josie’s father, Michael Andretti, after an absence of 17 years, troubles this path. After being secure in her relationship to her mother at least, Josie must now grapple with the appearance of another parental figure. Though she swears she doesn’t want a father, Josie can’t help but be intrigued by Michael, and wonder about him. Since, as Nonna Katia believes, Josie’s mother had such a heavy impact on who Josie has become, only time will tell what Michael Andretti’s influence will be on Josie’s journey of self-discovery.
The final key theme referenced in the early chapters of the novel is pressure. As Josie struggles to get through high school and forge her own life, she is constantly bombarded with the rules, regulations, and pressure of her society and community. In the early pages, this pressure comes in the form of Nonna Katia, who is hard on Christina and Josie. Katia is constantly worried about the perceptions of the Italian community, and pressures Josie to be a good, respectful, and traditional Italian girl. Independent and headstrong, Josie struggles with her grandmother’s expectations, and longs to run away from her societal trap. As the story unfolds, we must wait and see how successful she is.
