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Melina Marchetta
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Looking for Alibrandi Paperback – 5 October 1992

by Melina Marchetta (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 488 ratings
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Multi-award-winning, a bestseller andmade intoan award-winningfeature film, Looking for Alibrandi has become a modern classic.


Melina Marchetta'sstunning debut novel Looking for Alibrandi is one girl's story of her final year at school, a year she sets herself free. Josephine Alibrandi is seventeen and in her final year at a wealthy girls' school. This is the year she meets her father, the year she falls in love, the year she searches for Alibrandi and finds the real truth about her family - and the identity she has been searching for.
Amoving and revealing book, unusual for its honesty and its insight into the life of a young person on the brink of adulthood. Multi-award-winning, a bestseller andmade intoan award-winningfeature film, Looking for Alibrandi has become a modern classic.
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Previous page
  1. Reading age
    9 - 12 years
  2. Print length
    288 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Dimensions
    13.3 x 2 x 19.9 cm
  5. Publisher
    Puffin
  6. Publication date
    5 October 1992
  7. ISBN-10
    0140360468
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0140360462
  9. See all details
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Product description

Book Description

Multi-award-winning, a bestseller andmade intoan award-winningfeature film, Looking for Alibrandi has become a modern classic.

About the Author

Melina Marchetta is an internationally bestselling and award-winning author in more than twenty countries and eighteen languages. Her eighteen books range from beloved young adult fiction and fantasy through to contemporary and crime fiction, and works for younger readers. Her much-loved Australian classic Looking for Alibrandi swept the pool of literary awards when it was published, and was also released as a film, adapted by Marchetta, winning an AFI Award and an Independent Film Award for best screenplay, as well as the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award and the Film Critics Circle of Australia Award. In 2009 Marchetta won the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award from the American Library Association. Her most recent novel is The Place on Dalhousie. She lives in Sydney.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Puffin; 1st edition (5 October 1992)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140360468
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140360462
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 9 - 12 years
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.3 x 2 x 19.9 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 488 ratings

About the author

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Melina Marchetta

Melina Marchetta

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Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Melina Marchetta (born 25 March 1965) is an Australian writer and teacher. Melina is best known as the author of novels, Looking for Alibrandi, Saving Francesca and On the Jellicoe Road. She has twice been awarded the CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award: Older Readers, in 1993 and 2004. For Jellicoe Road she won the 2009 Michael L. Printz Award from the American Library Association, recognising the year's best book for young adults. Marchetta holds a name for being one of the more prominent Australian Authors of present time in Young-Adult Fiction.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo from Goodreads.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
488 global ratings

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Top reviews from Australia

Nicholas Reid
5.0 out of 5 stars A great novel
Reviewed in Australia on 30 July 2021
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I had to teach this one, and thought it was going to be 'worthy' if predictable. But it's actually a great novel, and should be read by young and old.
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Andrea Simpson
4.0 out of 5 stars My daughter needed this for school
Reviewed in Australia on 23 May 2021
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I liked the book
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Jelly Bean
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful
Reviewed in Australia on 22 May 2018
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I'm so pleased I read this book...So much an Australian experience. Recognised the places and the people. Congratulations to the author.
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jodie
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in Australia on 17 June 2015
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One of the best books I have ever read. Read it nearly every two years
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Nora King
5.0 out of 5 stars An Aussie Classic
Reviewed in Australia on 14 August 2015
Although I am not Italian, I did grow up in a Biracial home.
The kids at school were so cruel and they were so ignorant, One such student telling me infront of our class that Her parents, sister and herself all "hate coloured people". I was always awkward about it and found it hard to deal with it even though my unique features are something that are hightly sort after these days, When I first read this book it was like Every thing I had experienced and faced in this book turned film. Until this day, I love This book and find myself reading it a few times a year even though i know the story in-side-out.
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Jools
5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderfully thought provoking novel
Reviewed in Australia on 28 July 2015
Loved it!

Quotes I like from this book:

"It's an embarrassing contradiction when your mother gets pregnant out of wedlock because her Catholic upbringing prohibits contraception."

Lovable yet complex characters reveal a good portrait of the culture of 1950's Australia.

Australia was still so young and naive .... so ignorant and brash, like a pubescent teenager fumbling towards a maturity it doesn't yet comprehend.
The influx of immigrants bringing with them a confusion of fascination and fear. Their need to cling to the familiar...their own, somehow brought about a need in Australians to do likewise, each unwittingly fostering glaring cultural divides as they each vie and jostle for recognition and acknowledgement.
The irony was that they each felt alienated and threatened by the very same perceptions they had of one another.

Josephine Alibrandi is an Australian born of Italian descent, she is seventeen years old and lives with her mother who has raised her as a single parent...much to the chagrin of her own mother and her extended Italian family.
Being Italians they nurture strong principles when it comes to family and moral virtues, and Josephine's mother suffered a long and hard fall from grace when she fell pregnant out of wedlock and made the decision to keep her child.
Not only was her mother ostracized forever more by family and friends, but Josephine herself suffered throughout her childhood and teens from the cruel taunts of others, ranging from her fatherless upbringing to her Italian blood and her Australian birth, she struggled to find her niche.
Although Josephine carried the burden of these realities, she maintained a good sense of humour and a feisty disposition as she struggled with the pressures associated with coming of age.

With her HSC looming large and relationships with her family, teachers and even friends being stretched taut, Josephine was feeling the pressure of growing up and leaving her innocence behind.
If she thought life was already difficult enough, she was in for a real learning curve as life began to throw some very testing challenges in her way.
Josephine was about to grow up.

I loved this book, it is about contradictions, about how we perceive life, each other, values, things, and the consequences of our perceptions.

~This book made me think.
Do we ever truly understand anything? Providing things are fairly constant, we accept things as we understand them, and learn the ways to live with that understanding.
Then something happens one day which challenges those beliefs, or disproves them altogether, and totally throws us off kilter, literally erasing everything we believed and understood to be real...forcing us to re-evaluate our lives and everything that has shaped us...
And yet, if we had not made that discovery, what then? Do we ever truly understand anything? If we identify the lies we are forced to acknowledge them and are necessarily changed by that, but if we never identify the lies...does that mean they don't matter?
"Oh what a tangled web we weave"!

We so complicate things in our fervent desire for acceptance, and sell ourselves short in an effort to attain some intangible sort of (fake) nirvana, because we want to feel necessary.

I haven't come to any conclusions on my questions, but I am reminded of this favourite saying:
"All my life I wanted to be somebody
--only to discover that I am"

I can see why this book is a favourite in schools. I would definitely recommend it to all teenagers as well as adults.

I originally gave this 4★s but decided to change that to 5★s because it made me think, and laugh, and cry, and think some more.
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Erin Janssen
5.0 out of 5 stars Nostalgic
Reviewed in Australia on 27 October 2018
A contemporary tale of growing up in Sydney in the nineties. Growing up between two worlds and trying to reconcile the differences but at its core, it’s about realising self identity.
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Top reviews from other countries

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Maureen Bartlett
5.0 out of 5 stars Melina Marchetta addresses so many young adult issues
Reviewed in the United States on 22 January 2014
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Looking for Alibrandi is a captivating story with many twists and turns. Marchetta knows her stuff. The story rings true from start to finish. She allows the protagonist to hold the reigns and work out her own response to life's challenges. Due to her openness and truthfulness in communicating with others, the protagonist journeys towards high moral standards for her own life. This is a story about an intelligent girl wending her way through a maze of complicated living circumstances. The book is a must for anyone desiring to know what makes young adults tick.
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Camilla
5.0 out of 5 stars A young adult classic
Reviewed in Italy on 6 December 2014
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I first read the book in Italian, more than 10 years ago, loved it a lot, and recently re-read it in the original version. It used to be one of my favorite books and still is, though of course I have grown up and changed quite a lot since I first read it (I think I was 12). I was pleasantly surprised by how good the book still seemed to me - I mean, sometimes I re-read books I used to love as a teenager and I am ashamed of how stupid they are (and of how stupid I was for liking them). With this one that didn't happen. Maybe at the time I could relate to Josie's anxiety and fears and insecureness more than I do now, but the book still is relevant and catching and thought-provoking in its way, and as a 25 years old I can now appreciate some sides of it that I totally missed when I was younger.
I also loved to read it in English because of the freshness of the language, that was completely lost in the translation. It made the characters seem more alive. I only wish some of the italian names weren't so misspelled (I can't deal with "Ricardo" with one "c" lol). Oh, I was also extremely surprised by realizing that the Italian version I had was HIGHLY edited, with all the references to sex basically cut off (including the pivotal Josie-Jacob scene and a whole chapter, the second to last). Rather pathetic, if you ask me.
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april_sunshine
5.0 out of 5 stars A great and insightful read.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 March 2013
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As an Australian-Italian who grew up in Sydney this book speaks particularly to me. Having read it at 13, 16, 21 and now 26 and gaining different elements each time, I think this book is appropriate to all ages post mid-teens because it appeals to an identity search we have all been familiar with at some point in our lives.
Josephine's voice is earnest and engaging. It is a joy to watch her character grow across the story and slowly develop a more mature outlook on life and what independence, tradition and identity can mean for young women in our busy, multicultural world today.
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高齢花子
5.0 out of 5 stars 不自然と感じたこともあるけれど
Reviewed in Japan on 1 March 2013
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こんなことを言ったら、この小説が成り立たないのですが、主人公とその母のお父さんが誰であるかということは、異常にゴシップ好きのイタリア人地域共同体で話題になったと思います。そして誰であるかは容易にあてることができたと思います。その不自然さにはひっかかったけれど、でも、とても興味深い小説でした。オーストラリアへ移民した南欧系の人たちが経験した苦闘の歴史はアメリカ大陸へ移民した日本人のそれと重なりました。住んでいる場所だけで、民族名が分るというのは、現在もある貧困と差別が原因なのでしょうか。高校生が抱える進路への苦悩も、日本と同じだなあと思いました。
南欧系の人たちがwogという言葉で差別されるところでは、日本からでたことがないため、肌の色でいやな目にあったことがない自分は幸せなのかなあと思いました。そしてお父さんがいないということで、いじめつづけられていた主人公のところへ、お金もありそうな弁護士のお父さんが現れるところは、まるでおとぎ話のようでした。このうえは、主人公のママにも、やさしいお父さんにぜひあってほしいです。たとえその人が家族を持っていても、その人が選んだ妻である人やその子供たちはきっと主人公のママを愛してくれると思いました。
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GIANNI
5.0 out of 5 stars Tutto ok, prodotto perfetto.
Reviewed in Italy on 24 August 2023
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++++++++++++
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