The Friday Afternoon Club

The Friday Afternoon Club is the instant New York Times bestseller described as 'Wise, funny and generous' by The Times. The New York Times calls it 'Warm and perceptive', while the Observer notes it to be 'So honest and funny and smart'. The Washington Post remarks that 'Griffin Dunne knows how to tell a story', and the Los Angeles Times praises Dunne as 'a prospector for the incandescent detail'. According to the Guardian, it is 'Full of light, life and colour...a startling tale of precarious American privilege, spotlighting a family that is blessed and cursed'.

The book recounts fascinating events from Griffin Dunne's life. At eight, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, eager to meet 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 filmed 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, to its core, a family story that embraces the poignant absurdities and the best and worst efforts of its loveable, infuriating, funny, and moving characters—its author most of all.