Need fiction book recommendations about the 60s and 70s, please!

[atpeace]

I'm looking for a novel to read, set in the 607 or 70s.  Maybe something with a group of hippies, a commune, some urban activists, or simply life (for women) in those times.  Does anyone know of any books about this era (either written then about then, or written more recently about then).

Thanks!

[la mamita]

I love the book Drop City by T. C. Boyle. One of my top 10 favorite novels of all time.

Reading along because I love books about this era.

[merpk]

*Oops, double post ...

[merpk]

Get thee to the Tom Robbins shelf of your friendly neighborhood bookstore.  Make haste.

"Another Roadside Attraction" was published when Nixon was still in the White House, and "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."

But for the ultimate in '60 Literature, while it's technically not a novel, per se, because the people are real and names are not changed because nobody was in any way innocent LOL and the events are real (though possibly hallucinated), it still feels like a novel when you read it:  "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe.  Actually, read this one first, because it's reality, however loosely defined ...

[Vancouver Mommy]

Margaret Atwood novels such as the Edible Woman, Surfacing and Lady Oracle; Sophie's Choice; The Stepford Wives; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou; Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. That's all I can think of at the moment.

[zinemama]

Fear of Flying was a classic of its day.

[ollyoxenfree]

The Edible Woman is a good choice. 

While I Was Gone by Sue Miller fills most of your criteria. It's about a happily married middle-aged woman whose past, when she lived in communal student housing in the 60's, catches up to her. 

Marilyn French's The Women's Room is about a group of women and spans their experiences from the 1950s to the 1970s. 

Is Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar too early? It's set in the 1950's. 

It isn't fiction, but Helter Skelter by Vince Bulgiosi, about the Manson murders, would provide a lot about hippie/counterculture 60's life. 

[atpeace]

Love it!  Thanks for all the suggestions, I'm putting many of them on hold at my library...for some reason they don't have any Tom Robbins though.  Weird.  

Any more?  

[TEAK's Mom]

A.S. Byatt's quartet The Virgin in the Garden, Still Life, Babel Tower, and A Whistling Woman start out in the 50s, but move into the 60s in the second two books. In a lot of ways, they are very much about being a woman in that time period. They are rich, gorgeous books.

[hildare]

i just started I Hotel/ by Karen Yamashita.  It was a national book award nominee.  it's pretty awesome, but be warned: it is huge.  i am not sure i can ever finish it...

and, actually, the winner of the nf national book award was Just Kids, Patti Smith writing about the relationship between her & Mapplethorpe.. it mentions the factory/warhol, etc.  but imo, i hotel is actually looking like the better book.  i thought just kids was kind of boring, but lots of other people loved it...

[mamatoablessing]

Five Smooth Stones by Ann Fairbairn - about a black man and a white women who fall in love during the civil rights movement.  Amazing story!

Downtown by Ann Rivers Siddons - about an naive white girl turned civil rights activist in Atlanta in the 60's.  One of my favorites, although a little fluffy.

[cyclamen]

I came here to recommend AS Byatt - glad to see she's already been mentioned. Another good auther is Margaret Drabble (incidentally, Byatt's sister). I've only read *The Millstone* and it is a capsule of one woman's experience of academia and motherhood, and I believe it's set in the 60s.

[Connie Wilson]

For books set in the 70s, I am suggesting "It Came from the '70s: From The Godfather to Apocalypse Now," a collection of 50 film reviews written at the time with 76 photos, major cast and interactive trivia. 

For fiction, what about 'The Help."

[skreader]

"Small Changes"  by Marge Piercy (set in 60s and early 70s) - published in

"Vida" by Marge Piercy (set in mid-60s through late 70s) - published in 1973

Both of these involve (some) communal living, friendships, &  growing feminist consciousness; some radical politics. -published in 1980

"Drop City" by  T. Coraghessan Boyle -  a bunch of hippies move from a communal space in Sonoma to Alaska - kind of amusing, but rather cynical. Published in 2004.

Ella Price's journal - set in the mid-60s, a housewife takes college classes and begins to change

http://www.dorothybryant.com/Fiction.html#ellaprice

"Kaaterskill Falls"  by Allegra Goodman - set in the years 1976-1978, mostly among residents (mostly summer) of a resort town in the Catskills. No hippies, mostly Orthodox Jews. Some characters make appearances in other of Goodman's work (for example, Cecil Birnbaum & his wife Beatrix Kahan)

[philomom]

Originally Posted by skreader 

"Small Changes"  by Marge Piercy (set in 60s and early 70s) - published in

"Vida" by Marge Piercy (set in mid-60s through late 70s) - published in 1973

Both of these involve (some) communal living, friendships, &  growing feminist consciousness; some radical politics. -published in 1980

Love Marge!