"Josephine Alibrandi is seventeen, illegitimate, and in her final year at a wealthy Catholic school. This is the year her father comes back into her life, the year she falls in love, the year she discovers the secrets of her family's past and the year she sets herself free.

I'll run one day. Run from my life. To be free and think for myself. Not as an Australia and not as an Italian and not as an in between. I'll run to be emancipated."


I read this when it first came out and personally, I think it's Melina Marchetta's masterpiece. It's funny and sad at the same time and you can't help loving the heroine. She's written plenty since then, but this one is special. I was teaching it to a bunch of Sudanese girls in my ESL class and one of them commented, "Those Italians - they're so like Sudanese!" They could see the connection between Josie's community where everyone knows everyone else and is into everyone else's business and their own. I took my students to hear the author at the Melbourne Writers' Festival and they spent the entire trip back talking about what she'd said.

I love it!