Noughties

I really wanted for this book to engage me: a self-absorbed English literature student who feels completely out of his league having come to Oxford from a small village, leaving his younger girlfriend at home when he goes off to university, and falling in love (or fantasy) with the posh and seemingly perfect girl of his dreams. His entire life is inside of his head, is words, is trying to get the structure of his plotting and utterances perfect, but it rarely turns out that way. Our protagonist isn't particularly sympathetic, though, and understandably so, as we get to know him through his thoughts over a night of particularly excessive drinking (abnormally normal is implied), and wallowing in self pitying, and being generally incapable of making any sort of decision other than to not progress with his life in any meaningful way.