The 1980s: an era of political conservatism, population explosion, and truly wild fashion. Whether you lived through it for yourself, or you’re a curious youngster with imagined nostalgia for a time before smart phones and social media, it’s a time you can revisit in fiction. Here are twelve books set in the 1980s that are almost as good as being there.
My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
Grady Hendrix’s specialty is pulp fiction, especially mass-market horror paperbacks, so it’s no surprise that his fiction books set in the 1980s hit the spot. My Best Friend’s Exorcism does exactly what it says on the tin. BFFs Abby and Gretchen are having a very typical ’80s adolescence until an acid trip experiment goes awry. Suddenly, Gretchen is acting differently, and Abby starts to wonder what on earth could have possessed her friend… maybe it’s not something earthly at all. Even if the gory paranormal stuff isn’t your jam, the period details are divine – every chapter is named after a classic ’80s song or album. Read my full review of My Best Friend’s Exorcism here.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
If your vision of books set in the 1980s involves neon colours and leg warmers and dance music played on boom boxes, you won’t find what you’re looking for in The Secret History. Donna Tartt’s debut novel is more of a dark academia vibe, with hand-written essays and poetry read aloud and… well, murder. Tartt loosely based the setting on her own experience as a student at Bennington College in the ’80s (hopefully not the murder part), so it has a definite ring of authenticity. The story also wouldn’t work in a world with iPhones and social media, where characters could contact each other instantly at any moment and film everything they do. Read my full review of The Secret History here.
One Day by David Nicholls
One Day is famously set on the same date (15 July) each year over the course of two decades – the hint is in the title. In the strictest sense, then, it’s not one of the books set in the 1980s… however, the very first 15 July story takes place in 1988, so the reader is introduced to the characters at the peak of their ’80s-ness. Plus, David Nicholls has said that he originally had an idea about a story set on an anniversary of sorts when he was studying Tess of the d’Urbervilles at university, back in – you guessed it – the 1980s. So, the entire story has a very 1980s vibe, and it should absolutely count, thank you very much. Read my full review of One Day here.
The Miseducation Of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth
The Miseducation Of Cameron Post only just scrapes in as one of the books set in the 1980s, as the story begins as the decade is ending, in the summer of 1989. Cameron is an adolescent with a burgeoning romantic interest in girls, a secret she is terrified to reveal to her parents (bearing in mind that she’s grown up in a decade of mass hysteria and misinformation about homosexuality, due in large part to the AIDS pandemic). Her parents die, suddenly and tragically, before she ever has the chance to come out, and she ends up living with her born-again conservative Aunt Ruth – a woman with no compunction about sending a young lesbian to a conversion camp. Read my full review of The Miseducation Of Cameron Post here.
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
In a great metafictional feat, Jeffrey Eugenides transplants the traditional 19th century romance plot into campus and post-collegiate life of the 1980s. In The Marriage Plot, dutiful English student Madeleine writes a thesis on the works of George Eliot and Jane Austen, exploring their depiction of the foibles of the human heart. In her real life, she’s thrust into a love triangle to make Austen and Eliot and co. proud: between Leonard, the bipolar biology major with a side interest in philosophy, and Mitchell, the religious studies student seeking spiritual truth. Rest assured, however, that this contemporary love story has more to offer than a will-they-or-won’t-they.
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
You can’t talk about the ’80s without talking about yuppie greed, which reached its zenith during the Wall Street boom. It’s satirised to (drug-fuelled gore-filled) death in American Psycho, one of the most notorious books of the 1980s. It seems like your bog-standard toxic-masculinity novel, against the backdrop of expensive restaurants and exclusive bars in Manhattan’s best neighbourhoods, until the protagonist starts slipping in little asides about his penchant for sexualised violence. Hold onto your hats, folks – this one is not for the faint of heart. Read my full review of American Psycho here.
Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman
A lot of things have changed in the intervening decades, so it can be tricky when books set in the 1980s address subjects and circumstances that have since become socially controversial, if not proscribed. Case in point: Call Me By Your Name. Maybe back in 1983, when the story is set, no one would have lifted an eyebrow at a love affair blooming between a 17-year-old and the twenty-something academic visiting his parents’ Italian summer home. Aciman has been subjected to widespread criticism for romanticising what could be considered an exploitative, if not outright abusive, relationship – but even his critics must concede that he captures the heady intoxication of first love with great accuracy. Read my full review of Call Me By Your Name here.
Money by Martin Amis
Remember The Catcher In The Rye? Well, Money is basically the grown up’s version. The protagonist, John Self, is a a successful ad director who lives for fast food, hard liquor, and hot women – not necessarily in that order. If you like your narrators drunk, rich, and horny, then this is the book for you! He worships at the altar of money and self-indulgence, and it’s ultimately his undoing (as he loses every penny he has in a classic 1980s venture, trying to break into Hollywood). It’s all a very clever metaphor, of course, for the gross consumerism and capitalist reverie of the decade, but Self is so grotesque that it’s hard to remember at times that Amis is being ironic. Read my full review of Money here.
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
Before the girls in Gillian Flynn’s mystery thrillers were “gone”, they were survivors of Satanic cult ritual massacres in rural America. Yep, Dark Places addresses one of the dirty little secrets of the 1980s (among other things): the Satanic panic. The novel alternates between a contemporary investigation into the historic slaying, and flashbacks to the day it happened, and it paints a pretty grim picture. It turns out the 1980s weren’t all beer and skittles: for some families, particularly poor and rural ones, they were dark days of substance abuse, marital violence, and familial abandonment. Read my full review of Dark Places here.
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
At a highly-competitive performing arts school in the 1980s, David and Sarah fall head-over-heels in love with each other, an affair of great interest to their charismatic acting teacher, Mr Kingsley. You might think you know this story, but Trust Exercise will lull you into a false sense of security before revealing the shocking truth… or, at least, a version of it. It draws into question our common understanding of the power of adolescents, and the responsibilities of adults. You won’t truly see the full picture until the final piece falls into place, and maybe not even then. Read my full review of Trust Exercise here.
The Rearranged Life Of Oona Lockhart by Margarita Montimore
The Rearranged Life Of Oona Lockhart is another topsy-turvy novel, told (as the title suggests) out of chronological order. It all begins, though, in 1982, with 19-year-old Oona Lockhart about to celebrate her birthday and the beginning of a new year. But instead of turning one year older, at the stroke of midnight she is catapulted thirty-odd years into the future, into the body of her fifty-one year old self. It turns out, she’s living her life out of order, and she never knows which version of herself will come next. That’s not the way a life is meant to be lived at all, but Montimore turns the spectacle into a fascinating psychological quagmire.
Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton
A lot of these books set in the 1980s are American or European, but I would be remiss if I didn’t include at least one home-grown best-seller. Boy Swallows Universe is a semi-autobiographical novel, based on Dalton’s own childhood growing up in Brisbane in the ’80s. The narrator, Eli, is twelve years old when the story begins, and has “a lost father, a mute brother, a junkie mum, a heroin dealer for a stepfather, and a notorious crim for a babysitter”, so it’s fair to say that the cards are stacked against him. Still, he holds onto his optimism that he can fix things, and find himself the big break in journalism he’s always dreamed. (Remember when people dreamed of jobs in print media? Good times.) Read my full review of Boy Swallows Universe here.
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