Historical Fiction Set in the 1980s
The 1980s. Is there a decade more imitated, recreated, and memorialized — from the power ballads to the AIDS crisis to the late-decade fall of the Berlin Wall? With so many iconic movies and other coming-of-age pop culture artifacts created during the period, it’s no surprise that the same nostalgic fondness has extended to the novel. It’s not all rosy-glasses recollections, either; at least one book on this list is less about the years we want to revisit but rather alternate visions of the ’80s that we’ll do everything in our power to avoid. From mothers watching their daughters retrace their Doc Marten-ed steps to ghost clubs and BFF exorcisms, consider this list your literary equivalent of VH1’s I Love the ’80s.
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Add to BookshelfWe Ride Upon Sticks
by Quan Barry
Barry has a clear interest in the Salem Witch Trials, particularly in Tituba, having quoted her infamous testimony both in her poetry collection Asylum and now as the title of her forthcoming novel. Set in Danvers, Massachusetts — the site of the 1692 hysteria — the novel follows the 1989 season of the Danvers Falcons. Led by Salem descendant Abby Putnam, the all-girls team begins to wonder if their winning streak is the result of supernatural influences.
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2
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Only to Sleep
by Lawrence Osborne
Seventy years after Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Osbourne drags iconic pulp detective Philip Marlowe out of retirement in an authorized novel. It’s 1988 in Baja California, and 72-year-old Marlowe is enjoying some well-deserved peace … until two men dressed as undertakers appear to pull him back into the game, trailing a so-called dead man who took on a new identity to commit insurance fraud.
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3
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The Address
by Fiona Davis
New York City landmark The Dakota is the setting for interwoven stories a century apart. In 1984, recovering addict Bailey Camden tries to rebuild her life post-rehab in this massive residence, whose opulence she will never inherit despite her family’s connection to its architect. In 1884, Theodore Camden is stabbed to death by servant Sarah Smythe — or maybe, as Bailey will find during renovations, there’s more to the building’s dark history.
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4
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Swing Time
by Zadie Smith
In North West London in 1982, two girls meet in a tap dancing class: prodigy Tracey and the unnamed narrator, who lacks her friend’s talent but uses her knowledge of rhythm to escape their humble origins. Though their paths cross over the following 25 years, with Tracey succeeding as a chorus girl before her star winks out and the narrator attaching herself to a famous pop star, they never quite manage to get back in sync.
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5
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The Great Believers
by Rebecca Makkai
In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico’s little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter.
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6
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Cantoras
by Caro de Robertis
In defiance of the brutal military government that took power in Uruguay in the 1970s, and under which homosexuality is a dangerous transgression, five women miraculously find one another — and, together, an isolated cape that they claim as their own. Over the next 35 years, they travel back and forth from this secret sanctuary, sometimes together, sometimes in pairs, with lovers in tow or alone. Throughout it all, they will be tested repeatedly — by their families, lovers, society, and one another — as they fight to live authentic lives.
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7
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Heartbreaker
by Claudia Dey
Halfway through the 1980s, all 15-year-old Pony Darlene Fontaine knows of pop culture is listening to Whitesnake on her Walkman in “the territory,” the cult in which she’s spent her entire life. This isolated commune has welcomed only one outsider: Billie Jean Fontaine, Pony’s mother, who dropped in 17 years ago and recently made a run for it. Left behind, Pony wonders if she’ll follow in Billy Jean’s tracks and see what else she’s been missing.
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8
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The Saturday Night Ghost Club
by Craig Davidson
“The brain is the seat of memory,” reflects Jake Baker, “and memory is a tricky thing.” While adept at sorting through his neurology patients’ brain matter, Jake grapples with his own recollections of 1980s Niagara Falls. In a town that already feels haunted, nerdy and socially awkward tween Jake finds support for his conspiracy theories in the Saturday Night Ghost Club: exploring local phenomena with his eccentric uncle Calvin and a pair of Native American siblings new to town. But instead of Cthulhu, they uncover secrets much closer to home.
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9
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Veronica
by Mary Gaitskill
Former-fashion-model-turned-cleaning-lady Alison spends her shifts reminiscing on her heyday in 1980s New York during the height of the AIDS crisis. In particular, her peculiar friendship with Veronica, a middle-aged office temp who partied as hard as Alison and her model friends — and who died of AIDS-related complications in a period when women weren’t thought to be vulnerable. More bluntly honest than sentimental, Gaitskill’s novel is nevertheless compassionate in its depiction of women “past their prime” with plenty of stories left to tell.
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10
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Monkey Beach
by Eden Robinson
Tragedy strikes a Native community when the Hill family’s handsome 17-year-old son, Jimmy, mysteriously vanishes at sea. Left behind to cope during the search-and-rescue effort is his sister, Lisamarie, a wayward teenager with a dark secret. She sets off alone in search of Jimmy through the Douglas Channel and heads for Monkey Beach — a shore famed for its sasquatch sightings. Infused by turns with darkness and humor, Monkey Beach is a spellbinding voyage into the long, cool shadows of B.C.’s Coast Mountains, blending teen culture, Haisla lore, nature spirits, and human tenderness into a multi-layered story of loss and redemption.
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11
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Sag Harbor
by Colson Whitehead
Benji Cooper is one of the few Black students at an elite prep school in Manhattan. But every summer, Benji escapes to the Hamptons, to Sag Harbor, where a small community of Black professionals has built a world of their own. The summer of ’85 won’t be without its usual trials and tribulations, of course. There will be complicated new handshakes to fumble through and state-of-the-art profanity to master. Benji will be tested by contests big and small, by his misshapen haircut (which seems to have a will of its own), by the New Coke Tragedy, and by his secret Lite FM addiction. But maybe, just maybe, this summer might be one for the ages.
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12
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Red at the Bone
by Jacqueline Woodson
In 2001, 16-year-old Melody prepares to descend the stairs of her grandparents’ Brooklyn brownstone for her coming-of-age ceremony, wearing the dress that her mother was supposed to wear at her own living-room cotillion. But in 1985, 15-year-old Iris gets pregnant, to her mother Sabe’s shame, and watches one set of steps disappear. Told by all three generations of women, Woodson’s novel deftly depicts human desire, from Melody’s conception to the sensations described in the title.
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13
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The Sabotage Cafe
by Joshua Furst
When her teenage daughter Cheryl runs away from home, former-punk-turned-suburban-mom Julia doesn’t call the cops. Instead, she envisions every step of Cheryl’s adolescent rebellion as Cheryl seeks out her own punk freedom in Minneapolis’s seedy Dinkytown district, as she (intentionally or not) relives Julia’s 1980s coming-of-age. It remains to be seen if Julia, depressed and schizophrenic, is imagining all of this or truly acting as Cheryl’s guardian angel.
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14
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Tell the Wolves I’m Home
by Carol Rifka Brunt
After her beloved uncle Finn dies from AIDS-related complications in 1987, 14-year-old June grasps for someone else who can understand her. Not her 16-year-old sister, Greta, nor her mother, who’s grieving for her estranged brother. Instead, she finds solace in Finn’s lover, Toby, as they both try to keep his memory alive through stories and in clandestine additions to his eponymous painting of his two nieces.
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15
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My Best Friend’s Exorcism
by Grady Hendrix
Even the strongest of friendships go through a rough patch. Like 1988, the year that Abby’s BFF Gretchen got possessed by the devil. The two have been tight for nearly the entire decade, since the first moment of — as Abby put it — “having a total stranger choose you.” The problem is, after dropping some acid, Gretchen disappeared into the woods… and something chose her. Now Abby has to hope her claim is strong enough to bring Gretchen back.
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16
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A Ladder to the Sky
by John Boyne
Like the talented Mr. Ripley, Maurice Swift takes lives in order to improve his own — in a figurative sense. When the aspiring author is still waiting tables in 1988 West Berlin, he leverages an encounter with a celebrated novelist as material for his first novel. Hungry for greater fame, Swift traverses the globe, stealing inspiration from vulnerable and then more established people. While it’s not murder, the effects can be just as ruinous for whoever crosses his path.
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17
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Notes of a Crocodile
by Qiu Miaojin
Set in the post-martial-law era of late-1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile is a coming-of-age story of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan’s most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, this cult classic follows her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman. Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes a rich kid turned criminal and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover, as well as a bored, mischievous overachiever and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend.
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18
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1Q84
by Haruki Murakami
This is Murakami’s response to Orwell, set in an alternate-reality 1984. Over the course of a year in Tokyo, a young assassin named Aomame comes to realize that she’s living in a parallel universe from the world she remembers, while a writer named Tengo takes on a sketchy ghostwriting project that leads him into the bowels of a mysterious cult. As Aomame and Tengo’s realities begin to unravel, they must find their way to each other.
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19
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The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
Drawing on her own experiences at Bennington College in the ’80s, Tartt’s debut novel delves into the psychodramas among a cohort of students at an elite Vermont institution. The audience proxy is blue-collar Richard, drawn into the clique of classics majors who both idolize a beloved teacher and are in thrall to the Dionysus-like Henry. But when an attempted bacchanal ends in a grisly fashion, Richard’s new friends must decide whether to close ranks or turn on each other.
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20
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Ready Player One
by Ernest Cline
2045 is bleak, but in the OASIS, not only can users live out fantasy lives, but ’80s nostalgia is alive and well, thanks to creator James Halliday’s affection for the era. The key to the OASIS is up for grabs in an Easter egg hunt, but to win, gunters must obsessively study pop culture and live like they’re in the ’80s: defeating a game of Joust, rattling off Rush trivia, and even acting out the climax of WarGames line by line.
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21
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Malibu Rising: A Read with Jenna Pick
by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over — especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva. Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them … and what they will leave behind.
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