Talking Location With Rose D Patruno – NEWBURY, UK

13th March 2023

#TalkingLocationWith... Rose D Patruno, author of Hidden Heir: Dark Academia Fantasy – NEWBURY, UK

The Metaphor of Place

Have you ever had a tight, uncomfortable feeling? Making it hard to breathe, hard to move, feeling hemmed in. Maybe it’s because you’re… wearing ill-fitting, too-tight clothing, and you should be more honest about your clothing size. Or perhaps it’s a feeling within. But if you grew up in a narrow-minded hometown like mine, the whole world fits you like ill-fitting pants.

The first time I got to loosen my metaphorical pants was as an au-pair in Newbury’s countryside. It was the first time I took charge of my life, away from my family’s boundaries.

I tasted freedom and realized I hadn’t been taught to stand on my own two feet; I felt wobbly but free, like an infant walking on its own for the first time. So my novel’s location had to reflect my internal journey. I had to show how I changed my life, like changing clothes to see a new me.

Inga’s family had to live in rural areas where cattle farming would echo my childhood memories. The city had to be big enough to have more than a fictional tearoom, hence why the farm is close to Newbury, as I felt tied to this county. Although I was partially inspired by Newbury’s fall, its picture postcard beauty is associated with passionate protests by English people of a certain age. First, in the 1980s, against US airbases and nuclear weapons at Greenham Common. Then in the 1990s, environmental protestors against an ugly and unwanted bypass through beautiful hills. In another world, I could imagine Inga, my heroine, fighting for her freedom there.

I also wanted to offer the reader the experience of UK commuting, a part of everyday UK life, like drinking beige tea on that commute (and complaining about it and the train and darkly muttering that only Germans make the trains run on time). The train is an authentic European experience; it’s how, historically, we have crossed borders to find our fortune elsewhere on the continent. The opportunity to daydream as the green landscape passes and the fleeting yet unexpected encounters on said train only add to its charms.

I may not provide a guide to Newbury’s countryside or where to find the best macarons in Cambridge, but I wished to recreate Inga’s journey. The reader can go to Newbury, take the train, admire the countryside, and get to London in about an hour.

Like I escaped my cage by moving abroad, Inga would have to go as far as she could to prove herself. A bird that leaves its cage may fly past the window it was housed in to see freedom from the other side of the bars.

Being a girl willing to prove she can succeed despite the barriers her family built around her, a prestigious university was her logical option. As I flourished in Paris’ stimulating environment, Inga would need a challenging and inspiring garden to bloom. Moreover, the geographical and cultural distance would be a metaphor for the space Inga put between herself and her parents. Cambridge met my need, with the bonus that one of my husband’s acquaintances studied there in the same faculty as Inga. So research could be carried out over tea and macarons rather than TripAdvisor and Wikipedia.

Indeed, I could have placed Rana Farm in the fictional village of Framminsnoring while Inga attended the University of Oldbredy. But I wanted to make Inga’s world real, for the reader to live her experience, and Inga could be the girl you meet at the bus stop. I liked the readers to feel that Inga’s story was real and that a word with Magic could be as accurate as the train to Marylebone in London.

If you think about it, until the advent of Illuminism, the supernatural was the explication of many phenomena. Even today, there are so many things that we can’t explain. As in a Peppa Pig episode, when the piglet interrupts Daddy Pig’s grown-up explanation with “is it magic?”—to which the daddy replies “err… yes it is magic.” Magic is how we understand our everyday life as a child, and I am not sure how much we gain by outgrowing it.

There is Magic and wonder in the world around us, so why not embrace it? And who knows, maybe during one of your trips on the train from London to Newbury, you will meet your Biagio…

Rose D Patruno

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