Location from Work in Progress by Kat Mackenzie
The city of dreaming spires — where Tristan lives, where Alice briefly imagines a different kind of life, and where every building looks like it's judging your reading list.
Oxford enters the story through Tristan — Helena's son, who lives here and represents the kind of polished, educated, safe life that Alice's pre-breakup self would have found aspirational. The city itself is beautiful and slightly intimidating, all ancient colleges and literary ghosts. But Oxford is also where Alice realizes that she doesn't want the polished life anymore. The city is gorgeous but it's someone else's dream. She's looking for something messier, warmer, and probably Scottish.
Honey-colored college buildings clustered around ancient quadrangles. Bicycles leaning against every wall. Gargoyles watching from rooftops. The Bodleian Library looms with the gravity of a building that contains millions of books and knows it. Punts on the river in summer, fog in the streets in winter, and at all times the specific atmosphere of a place where people have been thinking very hard for eight hundred years.
Also known as: Oxford