OK, I admit it.  After reading Trespass I felt I had to try reading the novel Rose Tremain wrote that was shortlisted for the Booker prize.  And I'm glad I did.
  Restoration is set in London at the time of the Great Fire and Plague and features an unlikely hero in a self-centred, naive, but not exactly stupid man who finds favour with the King, loses it, and eventually finds it again.  He goes from living in a grand mansion with servants and flunkeys, to helping out at a madhouse in Norfolk, and back again.  It's funny, rude, powerful in its descriptions of the LOndon of that age.  In some ways its style reminds me of Neal Stephenson.
   I think this is one of the best books I've read recently, and I heartily recommend it.