1980s setting

[Auntlinny]

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

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

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.

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

'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. "

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.

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.

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

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

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

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).

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Money!

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

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