Victoria Sees It

Victoria Sees It is an experimental literary queer campus love story with a detective novel twist that delves into an under-explored phenomenon of women's mental health. Victoria is raised in a crumbling house in England by her working class aunt and uncle, visiting her mother at a psychiatric institution on the weekends. Her academic brilliance gains her entrance to exclusive schools and eventually Cambridge. There, free of her well-meaning aunt and abusive uncle, she meets her first true friend, Deb, a spacey artistocrat. Victoria and Deb create their own tiny bubble within Cambridge's strict class system, until one day, Deb goes missing. Victoria begins to unravel, until she meets an unlikely ally--a police officer named Julie with whom she begins a romantic relationship based on a search for Deb. They travel the countryside, visiting sites of suicides, murders, and accidents. But eventually, Julie's emotional demands of Victoria become too much for her. Victoria chooses a lonely life of academia, always teetering on the edge of emotional collapse as she remains obsessed with her missing friend. Wandering through a miasma of sexism, isolation, physical and mental health issues, Victoria's story is haunted by the spectre of her mother, whose own assault and subsequent pregnancy represent a break in her contract with the world.