If you had the ability to go back in time, what would you use all that extra life for? I recently saw About Time (equal parts dumb and adorable) and found myself nodding when the movie’s patriarch explains how he used that time to read. The worst/best thing about books is that it’s so overwhelming to choose what to read over what not to read. By virtue of choosing, you automatically leave tons of great stuff out.
Thankfully, books live forever. So let’s do a little time travel of our own. I’ve revisited the teased-hair, shoulder-padded '80s, and selected a few knockout titles from each year that you may have missed. I intentionally bypassed some you’ve probably heard of — Philip Roth and Tom Wolfe need no love from me, and I can’t help that I don’t like Cormac McCarthy — or already read. This list is driven by my taste and the assumption that you and I, dear Cosmo reader, as children of the '80s, are not so different.
1980
Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, are raised by a series of relatives in the strange, semi-magical Fingerbone, Idaho. There are images in this novel that will never leave you — their house filling with water during a devastating flood, the ghostly train bridge, the autumn leaves worn to nets of veins. But the thing about Housekeeping that twists my heart hardest is how aptly it gets at the way people grow apart — in this case two sisters, who, despite all they share, will never truly see each other.
Satan Says, Sharon Olds
Sharon Olds is the poetic daughter of female confessional poets like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. This book, her first, was published when she was 37, and it launched her Pulitzer-winning career. I promise you’ve never read anything like these torrential rages: “I am trying to write my / way out of the closed box… / Satan comes to me… and says, I’ll get you out. Say / My father is a shit. I say / my father is a shit and Satan / laughs and says, It’s opening.”
I once went to hear Olds read, and afterward I asked her to sign my beat-up copy of Satan Says. She opened the book to the title page, drew a colon after the word SAYS, and added: “Cheers!” I’ve adored her all the more ever since. Olds helped make it possible for women to write about whatever the fuck they want.
The Clan of the Cave Bear, Earth’s Children, Jean M. Auel
As a 13-year-old, I dog-eared the sex scenes in my mom’s copies of each book in the Earth’s Children quartet (Auel’s up to six now), stunned and fascinated by detailed scenes of characters taking each other from behind. That aside, if you’re a fan of historical fiction, this epic set during the last years of Neanderthal civilization is as immersive as the genre gets. Willful, beautiful Ayla guides the reader through this world, and her exploits inject enough intrigue and romance to keep you invested in Auel’s explanations of Neanderthal linguistics and coming-of-age rituals.
Superfudge, Judy Blume
Because, duh. Nothing will bring back your childhood like revisiting Superfudge. Peter and his little brother, Fudge, anxiously await the arrival of their new baby sister, Tootsie. Blume nails fraught dynamic between close-in-age siblings. This is also the book that confirmed my worst suspicions about Santa.
1981
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
I checked this out from my high school library after class on a Tuesday night, started reading after dinner and didn’t stop until 6 a.m. the next morning when I turned the final page. The Unbearable Lightness of Being was my introduction to a lot of things: marriage and infidelity, the philosophical novel, Communism and what it meant for real people — namely, these beautiful, funny characters. I still remember Sabina, with her bowler hat and artist’s spirit and craving for unconventional sexual experiences, like she’s a person I met in another life.
The Heart of a Woman, Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou’s bestselling memoir opens a door into the beloved writer’s daily life during the years she struggled to raise her son and fight for civil rights in an America resistant to change. Angelou’s loving, particular eye renders black leaders like Billie Holiday and Malcolm X with a tenderness you won’t find in any other historical document, and the chapters on Angelou’s love affairs will give you a new appreciation for the poet and musician’s turbulent, fully lived life.
1982
The Color Purple, Alice Walker
I love the intimacy of epistolary novels, how after just a few pages you’re so wrapped up in the narrator’s voice that it becomes an extension of your thoughts. The Color Purple, which won the National Book Award for fiction the year of its publication and nabbed the Pulitzer in 1983, is structured as a series of letters from Celie to God and later, after Celie feels God has abandoned her, to her sister Nettie. The Color Purple isn’t just a portrait of a poor black woman in the American South during the '30s; it’s a portrait of male domination and violence over women and the power of our voices to change the world.
Different Seasons, Stephen King
This collection of four novellas is something of a departure from Stephen King’s horror novels. Though they’re all stamped with King’s trademark interest in the macabre, they’ll appeal to fans of literary fiction. Of the pieces collected in Different Seasons, three were made into major films; The Body was adapted into the iconic film Stand by Me; Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption was the basis for Academy Award Best Picture nominee The Shawshank Redemption and Apt Pupil was adapted into a film of the same name. The fourth novella, The Breathing Method, is just as good as the other three — a Poe-esque story within a story, featuring decapitation, birth and a hint of love.
1983
Heartburn, Nora Ephron
Nora Ephron’s first novel introduces the themes she focused on throughout her career in films like When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle. As you’d expect from Ephron, Heartburn is a compulsively readable look at the agonizing breakdown of a marriage. The obviously autobiographical story of Rachel and Mark’s spiral toward divorce will be of interest to Ephron fans eager for behind-the-scenes details of Ephron’s messy second marriage to Carl Bernstein.
Winter’s Tale, Mark Helprin
If you’ve been to the movies recently, you may have seen the trailer for the upcoming film adaptation of Winter’s Tale, starring Colin Farrell and that sweet-faced girl who is also the youngest daughter in Downton Abbey. The novel takes place in a mythic version of New York City, and it tells the story of Peter Lake’s love affair with consumptive and slowly perishing Beverly Penn. Helprin’s narrative spans time and space and is an intoxicating mixture of fantasy, sci-fi and historical romance. Think The NeverEnding Story meets Shakespeare with all the world-building goodness of The Golden Compass trilogy.
1984
White Noise, Don DeLillo
White Noise is the sensation of anxiety distilled into book form. Professor Jack Gladney lives with his fourth wife, Babette, in a middle-of-nowhere Midwestern town, and they are terrified of death. When their community is ordered to evacuate because of “The Airborne Toxic Event” that traps the town under a tarry black cloud of presumably poisonous fumes, Jack and Babette’s paranoia reaches new heights. Even DeLillo’s sentences have the pitchy, doom-addled quality of an impending panic attack.
Boy: Tales of Childhood, Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl published a ton of excellent books in the '80s — The Twits (1980), The BFG (1982), The Witches (1983), Matilda (1988) — and I highly recommend them all. But for me Boy is one of the writer’s best. Fans of Dahl’s fiction will uncover the seeds of his future stories in scenes from Dahl’s childhood. Boy is full of weird vignettes from Dahl’s youth: an automobile accident that severed off his nose except for a strand of flesh; Dahl warming the toilet seats for the prefects at his boarding school; and my favorite, when he took revenge on a mean sweetshop proprietor by leaving a dead mouse in a candy jar.
The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
This coming-of-age story of a Latin American family in Chicago will strike a chord with anyone who ever felt torn between her dreams and her home. Esperanza Cordera, the poetic narrator of the series of titled fragments that make up this novel, is desperate for a life beyond Mango Street, where she lives in a tiny house brimming with her family. The final chapter (called “Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes”) always, always makes me tear up. “They will know I have gone away to come back,” Cisneros writes. “For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot get out.”
1985
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
This dystopian novel is set in a future society where women are secondary citizens, essentially kept as concubines for reproductive purposes in a world where fertility rates are at such a decline they threaten human extinction. This hallmark of feminism and speculative fiction is equally great for book clubs or a mind-blowing solitary reading experience.
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
It’s easy to read Love in the Time of Cholera as a sentimental testament to the everlasting power of love. Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fell in love in childhood, but their star-crossed story was complicated by Fermina’s father, who forced her into marrying a wealthy doctor. After Fermina’s husband dies, Florentino reenters her life. But Marquez’s depictions of love in its various forms aren’t black and white — Fermina’s marriage allows her access to a life she would have been denied, and it’s arguable whether Fermina is the only woman Florentino “truly” loved (she’s certainly not the only one he sleeps with). Florentino’s ecstatic romanticism sometimes seems a sickness, not unlike the cholera that afflicts so many over the course of the novel.
Self-Help, Lorrie Moore
Lorrie Moore is required reading for sharp young women. Self-Help is her first collection of short stories, and its lessons will stick in your head like the words of an urbane, self-deprecating, brutally clever friend. From “How to Be an Other Woman”: “When you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet.”
1986
Redwall, Brian Jacques
I know, we’re adults now, and it might be a little weird to revisit the Redwall series. I have a soft spot for these books — I loved them as a kid, and my boyfriend and I bonded over them on our very first date. If you’re not familiar with Redwall, it’s a series of children’s fantasy novels starring anthropomorphic animals, with their own caste system and rituals and incredibly complicated menus. Seriously, these mice/voles/otters/squirrels are foodies. The Redwall books are The Chronicles of Narnia for '80s kids. And we were lucky enough to have those too.
Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel
A groundbreaker. In 1986, Firebrand books published the first collection of Alison Bechdel’s syndicated comic strip, "Dykes to Watch Out For." The strip features Bechdel’s signature artistic style and is a warm, funny look at female relationships — lesbian and straight.
1987
Beloved, Toni Morrison
You probably read Beloved in a high school English class and talked at length about the novel’s brilliant handling of the psychological impact of slavery. That’s the first reason Beloved is important. The second reason is for the relationship between Sethe and her daughters, which renders the poignant, sometimes stifling mother-daughter bond with unparalleled accuracy.
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, Fannie Flagg
Flagg tells the heartwarming story of the unlikely friendship between middle-aged housewife Evelyn Crouch and elderly Ninny Threadgoode. Ninny’s stories empower Evelyn to take control of her life and marriage. A classic ode to way good girlfriends change each other’s lives.
1988
Bad Behavior, Mary Gaitskill
Bad Behavior takes the male gaze and hurls it back on its disgusting, narcissistic self. Remember the movie Secretary, with its saccharine ending? The movie is based on a short story from this collection, which ends in a grayer (and truer) place. Mary Gaitskill’s mixed-up women are hungry without knowing what they want to eat, and their experiences with resonate with you.
The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
Taylor Greer, like so many young female protagonists, is ambitious and sharp and ready to do anything to escape her dead-end Kentucky town. She manages to avoid tying herself to a man and a child, only to get saddled with a baby almost as soon as she sets off on her journey to find herself. What happens after Turtle, an abused infant, is left in the passenger’s seat of Taylor’s car will take your breath away.
1989
The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
In preparation for this roundup, I asked my mom what book she loved most from the '80s. "The Joy Luck Club!" she shouted, literally two seconds after the question came out of my mouth. Four Chinese immigrant women in San Francisco play mah-jongg while discussing their American-born daughters and food. Lots and lots of mouthwatering food.
Geek Love, Katherine Dunn
Geek Love is a cult classic. It stars the Binewski family, a cast of freakish ex-carnies hell-bent on a vision of the future stuffed with more oddities and mutations than those on display in their own home. After the success of Geek Love, Katherine Dunn retreated from the literary scene. Rumor has it that another novel is on the way, but that rumor’s been around since 1989. If and when Katherine Dunn publishes another book, the literary world will throw its own carnival.
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