The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir

(Hardback, Main)

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At nine, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion's legendary L.A. party for the publication of Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. In his early 20s, he shared an apartment in Manhattan's Hotel Des Artistes 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 working as a popcorn seller 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 22-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, which ended in a travesty of justice that also somehow marked the beginning of their father Dominick Dunne's career as a bestselling author of true crime narratives.

And yet, for all its bold-face cast of characters and jaw-dropping scenes, The Friday Afternoon Club is no celebrity memoir. It is, down to its bones, a family story that brilliantly embraces the poignant absurdities and best and worst efforts of its loveable, infuriating, funny and moving characters - its author most of all - finding wicked, self-deprecating humour and glints of surprising light in even the most harrowing and painful of circumstances.

Reviews

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 * Booklist *
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 * Kirkus (starred review) *
Joyful, tragic and resilient with a masterful, roving tone as varied as the actor-director-producer-author's restless career -- David Duchovny
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. -- Alexandra Styron, author of READING MY FATHER
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 -- Susanna Moore, author of IN THE CUT and MISS ALUMINIUM

Author Bio

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.