How do you feel different characters experience exile, both at home and abroad? How do invisible prisons differ from real ones?

Themes of exile and imprisonment recur throughout the novel. How do you feel different characters experience exile, both at home and abroad? How do you think invisible prisons differ from real ones?

There are two major forms of confinement in this novel. One is actual confinement such as Giuseppe experiences at the internal exile Calabrian colony in San Lorenzo and the other is the self imposed exile his daughter Maria and his wife Annuziata struggle with in Los Angeles. Both are prisons. Whether the constraints are imposed by governments or by guilt and circumstance, the lack of freedom is still awful and soul crushing.

Being bound by a physical barrier, like on San Lorenzo, or a dictated barrier, as in Los Angeles when Maria and other refugee immigrants were restricted to a mile radius from their home, is the same. Both are restrictions on movement and freedom. Both impact lives and make the person less. Exile from a country, a family, or a community hurts. It changes a person not only in the moment, but for the rest of their lives. This novel captured that type of loss in a heartbreaking way.

Prisons can be walled or wall-less as evidenced in the story by Guiseppe's confinement in Calabria and Maria and Annunizata's confinement in America, separated by a whole continent and ocean. Having to leave roots, traditions, and family to start over somewhere else is hard (we all experience this at some point in our lives) but as the novel seems to show what we make of this confinement is ultimately the measure of our character as people.

In the novel the reader experiences how characters in the book coped with imprisonment both one with actual walls or imposed confinement with Guiseppe as the person who is focused on or a self-imposed confinement set by Maria and her mother as way to connect and sympathize with her father plus immigrants were restricted to a one mile radius to where they were allowed to travel by the government.

So many actual physical imprisonments take place in this book, Guiseppe, in San Lorenzo, the restrictions placed on Maria and the other immigrants during the war, Lous when he is falsely accused of a crime and sentenced... but also, there were more emotional and mental imprisonments, I felt Eddie Lu felt imprisoned by the roles that he was forced to play in the movies, Maria was imprisoned by her self loathing for the role she had played in her fathers arrest, and also, by the limitations that Artie put on her as an artist and her role as editor of film even though she was not allowed to have a byline.

Marra did an excellent job exploring the themes of exile and confinement.

Several characters experience both emotional and physical exile, detached from their loved ones, the place they love, and/or the traditions and way of life they cherish. They have to flee their home and land in a foreign place with which they are not familiar. They have to create a new life, and that proves very difficult. Bela Lugosi is all but exiled by Hollywood, destined to be forever identified as a single character and not permitted to play other roles to which he believes he is suited. Artie is an exile in Hollywood from its inner circle of power, as well as from his own family's affections by Ned, seen as a second-class movie mogul and the inferior brother by his twin. In Anna's case, Marra skillfully illustrates self-exile after she makes a choice she finds impossible to live with.

Some confinements are physical (Giuseppe, Nino, and Maria), even though lacking tangible, visible walls or barricades. Some confinements are psychological, emotional, and/or sociological. Eddie is confined by his race, skin color, and ancestry. He is not accepted as anything beyond a racial and cultural stereotype within the industry he has chosen, and is prohibited from using his talent to create a career for himself as a versatile actor capable of playing a wide variety of roles, classical and contemporary. He and Maria are confined by society to have a discreet relationship because it is illegal for them to marry, and Maria is confined for much of the story by her emotional barriers from fully giving herself to the relationship. Like Eddie, Bela Lugosi is confined to forever be seen as the character he brought to life on the screen (and the way he ended up impersonating himself was brilliantly ironic and heartbreaking). Maria is confined to the role society/the male patriarchy insists she play as a woman in the corporate/artistic world. Anna is imprisoned in an emotional and psychological hell on earth for which she carries enormous guilt and self-recrimination.