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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
"By turns quirky, candid, passionate, heart-rending and inspiring, The Friday Club is a splendidly told tale of the tragicomedy we call life."
"Griffin skillfully deploys humor to soften life's blows."
"Dunne and his father."
"Griffin spares no emotions in bringing readers the lion's share of his life story ..."
"This clear-eyed, heartfelt memoir ends with the birth of Dunne's daughter in 1990; readers will hope for future books."
"What a guy, I kept thinking, as I wolfed his book down."
"With a breezy style, Dunne chronicles how his family got through good times and bad — despite interfamilial spats — by coming together as a family when it counted."
"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."
"He gets terrific mileage from his own bad luck ..."
"But there are pockets of real depth, too."
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