If you are going to read any book for pleasure this term (admittedly highly unlikely in the rapid and unexpected wake of week four), it should be this one. Not necessarily because it is a work of literary genius, but because it will probably be the only book published during your time here that is a perfect representation of your present mood as a student (despite being set in the 80s), complete with dissertation-crises, seriously self-conscious pop culture referencing, and an updated Austen-esque battle-of-the-sexes plot.

Reading the blurb I was alarmed that the heroine is an English student named Madeleine writing her dissertation and engaged in literary theory based investigations, whilst reading Barthes. Being an English student named Madeleine writing my dissertation, engaged in similar investigations, whilst reading Barthes etc, this seemed exactly the right book for me. After the angsty The Virgin Suicides, and obsessing over the hazy, sinisterly cool Sophie Coppola film re-telling when I was sixteen, the perfect age for themes of high-school anxiety and darkly, dizzying explorations of teenage insecurities, innocence and lust, Eugenides third novel about University and serious life and relationship issues is of course the ideal successor. When I was eight I childishly imagined I was a character in a book; maybe I was right after all.

Eugenides and Madeleine (both me and the character) explore the question of whether, in light of the ease and acceptance of divorce and the sexual revolution, great turbulent love stories like those of the 19th century are still alive. Eugenides attempts to create a new kind of love story, and although the dark and broody loner Leonard Bankhead will never be a match for Mr. Darcy to literary lovers, the novel succeeds in creating a sense of the timeless and transcendental nature of a love story. It is one sprinkled with literary references that will satisfy even delight the English student, though littered with pop mentions that may slightly embarrass the hard core music fan.

The novel, in true Eugenides style, playfully loops around itself whilst daringly and humorously digging at literary theory, something most students should enjoy. It is perhaps the only out-of-your-degree novel you should read this term because the three main characters act like all English students, "pursuing university degrees doing something no different from what they'd done in first grade:  reading stories." And this is the perfect story - about reading stories - to remind you, especially if your name is Madeleine, in the darkest, toughest moments at the English faculty, of why you chose this degree.