1980s setting

The Line of Beauty - Alan Hollinghurst - is set in the 80's I think.

Yes, (Britain) in the early to mid-1980s. Really enjoyed it.

Starter for 10 is quite fun.

i've always understood bonfire of the vanities to be the ultimate 80s novel but haven't read it.

Jay McInerney Bright Lights Big City

And Brett Easton Ellis Americn Psyco are the first that spring to mind

Margaret Drabble The Radiant Way

What A Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe is brilliant, especially if you like intelligent political commentary which is also very funny.

Oh yes, how could I forget about What a carve up??? It's brillinat!

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell is set in 1982.

Or why not go back to that classic of the time, The Secret Dary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and three-quarters? Full of period detail...

Also The Rotters Club by Coe
Northern Clemency by Hensher - starts in the 1970s I think

Was going to suggest Bonfire of the Vanities too - Tom Wolfe.
Also David Lodge - late 1970s/early 1980s.

And a more recent on set in the 1980s -
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides (sp?)

Am loving these suggestions. Love adrian mole! I was gonna suggest american psycho. Gets really into eighties yuppy lifestyle but you need a strong stomach. By far the most disturbing, Torture book i've ever read. Extreme sexual violence. It's good though. I've read it twice

Just Googled this and,'Let The Right One In' is set in the 80s - tis a Swedish vampire novel and is pretty good but don't read anything else by him because his others are rubbish.

I think Willy Russell's, 'The Wrong Boy'might be set in the early 90s but it still has an eighties 'feel' iirc.

'Never Let Me Go' has a late seventies, early eighties feel to it.

'Once In A House On Fire' by Andrea Ashworth is an incredible read. Highly recommended.

Also another vote for The Northern Clemency, part of it takes place during the miners' strike.

I'd rushed back here to say 'what a carve up' but am not surprised that lots of people got there first!

what was lost by Catherine oflynn

Secret Diary and Growing Pains of Adrian Mole are great - I reread them recently as so much of them went over my head at the time.

Was going to suggest The Line of Beauty but was beaten to it! Also agree with What a Carve Up and the first three Aidrian Moles.

Horrid as it is, American Psycho is a fantastic book. I second all the Jonathan Coe, and The Line of Beauty

I second Black Swan Green - well observed story of a boy who is a teenager at secondary school in the 80s.

I have just come across this:
http://www.tripfiction.com/Book/3046 set in the 1980s, Winner of the Mail on Sunday Novel Competition