The Friday Afternoon Club

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

'Wise, funny and generous' The Times

'Warm and perceptive' New York Times

'So honest and funny and smart' Observer

'Griffin Dunne knows how to tell a story' Washington Post

'Dunne is a prospector for the incandescent detail' Los Angeles Times

'Full of light, life and colour...a startling tale of precarious American privilege, spotlighting a family that is blessed and cursed' Guardian



At eight, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion's legendary LA launch party for Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. In his early twenties, he shared a Manhattan apartment with his best friend and soulmate Carrie Fisher while she was filming some sci-fi movie called Star Wars and he was a struggling actor selling popcorn at Radio City Music Hall. A few years later, he produced and starred in the now-iconic film After Hours, directed by Martin Scorsese.



In the midst of it all, Griffin's twenty-two-year-old sister, Dominique, a rising star in Hollywood, was brutally strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend, leading to one of the most infamous public trials of the 1980s. The outcome was a travesty of justice that marked the beginning of their father Dominick Dunne's career as a bestselling author of true crime narratives.



And yet, for all its boldface cast of characters and jaw-dropping scenes, The Friday Afternoon Club is no mere celebrity memoir. It is, down to its bones, a family story that embraces the poignant absurdities and best and worst efforts of its loveable, infuriating, funny and moving characters - its author most of all.



Griffin Dunne has been an actor, producer and director since the late 70s. Among his work, he produced and acted in After Hours, directed Practical Magic and the documentary The Center Will Not Hold about his aunt, Joan Didion. Griffin and his dog Mary live in the East Village of Manhattan.



A generous, starry book that veers into deeper emotional waters than your standard chronicle of well-connected Hollywood...a novelistic and compelling account of a life, and a self-deprecating guide to the Dunnes' many highs and lows. It is a fond yet riveting family portrait



So honest and funny and smart...What a guy, I kept thinking, as I wolfed his book down



A first-rate memoirist...It is no small thing to write a bereavement memoir with the shadow of Joan Didion over your shoulder, but Dunne does not suffer for the comparison...[a] wise, funny and generous book



A riveting memoir...moving and effective



Warm and perceptive



Griffin Dunne knows how to tell a story



Dunne is a prospector for the incandescent detail



Irish touchstones, such as wit, guilt and silence, are all here, spangled with late-20th-century Hollywood stardust . . . Heartbreaking and wry



Captivating...beyond entertaining, honest in confronting heartbreaks and jealousies, often genuinely funny, and somehow understated... Dunne's storytelling is buoyant, his prose crisp; he's most definitely a writer



Despite the glamorous backdrops in California and New York, the author portrays a family whose core human experiences make them universally relatable . . . A poignant love letter and evidence that through it all, genuine love is the backbone that keeps a family strong



Dunne's writing is vivid, openhearted and full of a rich irony that inflects even the most emotional scenes. . . The result is a raucously entertaining homage to an unforgettable dynasty



Joyful, tragic and resilient with a masterful, roving tone as varied as the actor-director-producer-author's restless career



A riveting and rollicking portrait of Dunne's unconventional family as well as a deeply considered reckoning with the tragedy that exploded within it. He is honest about himself, generous with others, and insightful about every glittering and dark aspect of his richly lived years. He is also - like the best entertainers - ridiculously funny. This is just a wonderful memoir. Period.



Griffin Dunne has given us a family history that is both humorous and heartbreaking. The Friday Afternoon Club is infused with the vitality that confidence in one's perceptions can bring and the ambiguity that accompanies the expense and strain of fame. Confessions of this order are works of art