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The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir
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About This Book
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
"Delightfully gossipy ..."
"Griffin skillfully deploys humor to soften life's blows."
"Dunne's writing is vivid, openhearted, and full of a rich irony that inflects even the most emotional scenes ..."
"Griffin spares no emotions in bringing readers the lion's share of his life story ..."
"Dunne largely bears...slings and arrows with good humor and equanimity, conscious, perhaps, that in retelling them he becomes the hero of the joke."
"Raw and painful to read at times but compelling in its honesty, this memoir about the Dunnes will appeal to movie and true-crime fans."
"So honest and funny and smart ..."
"A poignant love letter and evidence that through it all, genuine love is the backbone that keeps a family strong."
"It would be easy to dismiss a memoir by someone like Griffin who had every break in life, but this one is a gem written with sharp humor the perspective of someone who's seen it all and knows it."
"By turns quirky, candid, passionate, heart-rending and inspiring, The Friday Club is a splendidly told tale of the tragicomedy we call life."
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