The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir
Ratings10
Average rating4
Griffin Dunne’s memoir of growing up among larger-than-life characters in Hollywood and Manhattan finds wicked humor and glimmers of light in even the most painful of circumstances
At eight, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion and uncle John Gregory Dunne’s legendary LA launch party for Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. At sixteen, he got kicked out of boarding school, ending his institutional education for good. In his early twenties, 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 concessionaire 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 crime reporter for Vanity Fair and a victims’ rights activist.
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.
Reviews
Popular Reviews
Reviews with the most likes.
This memoir had everything. The first half was fun, with lots of name-dropping and fun stories about celebrities like Sean Connery, Joan Didion, Carrie Fisher, and more. The second half was consumed by the murder of Griffin's beloved sister, Dominique, and all of the emotions associated with that horrific event. Throughout the book, you come to know and love Griffin's family. This is a beautiful memoir about people you come to feel as though you know personally.
I was expecting something a little more literary from the son of [a:Dominick Dunne 11012 Dominick Dunne https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1206680877p2/11012.jpg], and nephew of writing power couple [a:John Gregory Dunne 79463 John Gregory Dunne https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1212082753p2/79463.jpg] and [a:Joan Didion 238 Joan Didion https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1640504428p2/238.jpg]. But actor/director/producer Griffin Dunne relies primarily on name dropping in his memoir (he “deflowered” Carrie Fisher at her request; Sean Connery rescued him from drowning; he took a drama class with Linda Lovelace, who introduced Griffin to her current beau, Sammy Davis, Jr.) He also rather blithely portrays his family's dysfunctional dynamics, including alcoholism, mental illness, and closeted homosexuality, that fostered loving but fragile relationships. The heart of the memoir is the tragic death of Griffin's younger sister Dominique, who was strangled by a former boyfriend. The Dunnes went against legal advice and chose to attend the killer's trial, then watched, horrified, as the facts of the crime were twisted by the defense attorney so that Dominique and her rich, privileged family were seen as partially culpable. These chapters show that Dunne is capable of strong feelings and insight. Too bad the rest of the book has such an emotionally detached tone. Dunne's story ends abruptly in 1990 with the birth of his daughter (Mom is actress/former Bond Girl Carey Lowell). He doesn't discuss his most recent role as Uncle Nicky Pearson on NBC's This is Us, but I'll bet he felt comfortable being part of a drama about family dysfunction.
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Press for the ARC of Griffin Dunne's The Friday Afternoon Club (released in June 2024).
I could not put this book down. Dunne grabs your attention from page 1. He tells of his life and his talented loving dysfunctional family. He also includes the story of his sister's murder and the effect it had on his entire family. He highlights the solitary experience of a family dealing with the justice system in such a horrible tragedy.
