1980s setting

[Auntlinny]

What I said in the title really. Can anyone think of a good read with an eighties setting?

[EarthtoMajorTom]

Rumours of a Hurricane (the hurricane is the 1987 one that Michael Fish failed to predict). A great read about the Eighties.

[Frizzybear]

Not a huge Martina Cole fan but i really enjoyed The Take, very good book set in 80's East end

[Suzietwo]

Money!

[MrsTaraPlumbing]

I am thinking the first books of Minnette Walters. Crime fiction.

[JackieTheFart]

Sue Grafton's Alphabet Series are all set in the 80s.

The Time Traveler's Wife, a good portion set in the 80s.

The Robber Bride.

[AnonYonimousBird]

The Generation Game takes you right through 70-80-90's.... Enjoyable read.

[AnonYonimousBird]

I second What a Carve Up. Ridiculous, but an absolute hoot!

[Planetofthedrapes]

Peerless Flats by Esther Freud
Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
Slaves of New York by Tama Janowitz
Baby Cakes, Significant Others and Sure of You by Armistead Maupin

and now for some really trashy reads....
Princess Daisy.........Judith Krantz
Hollywood Wives......Jackie Collins

[elkiedee]

I'm planning to read Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd this month, apparently it's set during the miners' strike. The Cold, Cold Ground and I Hear the Sirens in the Street by Adrian McKinty are crime novels set in early 1980s Belfast, at the time of the Hunger strikes.

[Lomaamina]

I agree BestIsWest Nice Work is an excellent choice for an 1980s novel as it has at its heart the decline of industry contrasted with the emergence of new universities (and a great story too).

[BestIsWest]

Nice Work by David Lodge. I've just started re-reading it and it is the 80's very much as I remember them.

[ChewingOnLifesGristle]

I'm going to add to the chorus for Starter For Ten. Very funny

[Colyngbourne]

Like others above, I would recommend The Northern Clemency and Black Swan Green

[AmandaPayneAteTooMuchChocolate]

Currently reading Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt. Not a '80s novel', but it is set in the 80s and deals indirectly with the start of the AIDS epidemic so feels very of its time.

[Bue]

All of Anne Tyler novels that were written in the 80s are set in the 80s (go figure). They feel pretty timeless though.

Starter for Ten is brill.

[Lomaamina]

'City of the Mind' by Penelope Lively: www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780141909967,00.html?strSrchSql=Penelope+Lively/City_of_the_Mind_Penelope_Lively

"In London?s changing heartland, architect Matthew Halland is constantly aware of the past and the present blending together. It stirs memories of his boyhood, the early years of his daughter Jane and the failed marriage that he has almost put behind him. Here too is the London of prehistory, of Georgian elegance, of the Blitz. But Matthew is occupied with constructing a new future for London in Docklands, and with it he begins to forge new, fragile yet hopeful, beginnings of his own. Lives connect and intersect in a web of connections, random and mysterious, in one of Penelope Lively?s most evocative novels. "

[BestIsWest]

Rumpole of the Bailey! I used to love those books .

[TheSmallClanger]

GB84 by David Peace, although you do need certain political sympathies and a strong stomach.

The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis - nice companion to American Psycho, less gory. Less Than Zero is also set in the 80s, but I didn't like that.

[tripfiction]

It's a bit like busses, no 1980s set books and then they all pop up.

Another suggestion which has rave reviews - plenty of Gallic flair in this one, set around Mitterand's hat! www.tripfiction.com/Book/3049

[PeasandCucumbers]

I really enjoyed Starter for Ten

[tripfiction]

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

[needanewnickname]

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

[ivehadaverybadday]

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

[ISpyPlumPie]

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.

[notcitrus]

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.