Looking For Alibrandi Essay, Research Paper

LOOKING FOR ALIBRANDI

Looking for Alibrandi is written by Melina Marchetta and was nominated as book of the year for older children. The book is well suited to teenage readers because it contains a theme that all teens can relate to search for identity.

The novel Looking for Alibrandi is as the title suggests about Josie Alibrandi s search for her identity.

Looking for Alibrandi is the story of Josie s experiences at school, and her relationships with friends and family during her last year at St. Martha s girl s school.

Apart from the search for identity theme,

Looking For Alibrandi deals with other themes that teenagers can also relate to. Teenage suicide, teenage sexuality, multiculturalism, peer pressure and family are all issues that Josie has to deal with.

In her final year of high school, Josie s father comes back into her life, she falls in love, discovers secrets of her family s past and her friend commits suicide. Josie struggles with her Italian-Australian identity and the highs and lows of teenage life. It s the story of a young girl who feels she doesn t belong. As the story unfolds, she learns to cope with these feelings of insecurity and learns that everyone has similar feelings at different times.

Josie s friend, John Barton, commits suicide as he finds things become too much. Because of the pressure of the HSC, his father s expectations and his father s control and ruling over his life, he sees he has no other choice. Josie finds this hard to deal with.

Josie s decisions regarding sexuality, including her decision not to sleep with her boyfriend, Jacob, has a lot to do with mistakes her mother and grandmother made when they were young. Josie s mother fell pregnant at an early age and ended up a single parent and her grandmother had an affair when she was young and produced Josie s mother.

Throughout the novel, Josie struggles to balance the control of her Italian background with the freedom of Australia today.

In the end, Josie realises life doesn t always go the way we would like but you always have to live with the consequences.

I really enjoyed the novel, because I could relate to it, and because I learned from it. I learned that everyone has problems, some worse than others, but what matters is how you deal with them. I would recommend Looking for Alibrandi to all teenagers.