The Friday Afternoon Club

A Family Memoir

By: Griffin Dunne

Narrated by: Griffin Dunne

The instant New York Times bestseller • Named a Best Book of the Year by TIME, NPR, People, Town & Country, and Air Mail

“Warm and perceptive.” —New York Times

“Griffin Dunne knows how to tell a story." —Washington Post

"Dunne is a prospector for the incandescent detail.” —Los Angeles Times

“What a remarkable and moving story filled with twists and turns, the most famous of faces, and a complex family revealed with loving candor. I was blown away by Griffin Dunne’s life and his ability to capture so much of it in these beautifully written pages.” —Anderson Cooper

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.

Tribute to an interesting family

This book was sad and funny. It was interesting to get a glimpse into lives of people whom I’d known in other contexts from tv, movies, and features in Vanity Fair. Griffin Dunne’s narration was excellent.

If I could give this book a dozen Stars, I would.

I wasn't sure what I was getting into when I started this book. I knew Griffin Dunne from his acting, mostly from his role as Uncle Nick on This is Us. of course I'd heard of his father as well, but I had no idea what this family was all about. This is a beautiful book about an incredible family. It blends new Hollywood and old Hollywood in such a sweet and lovely way. Listening to the audio version read by Griffin was totally delightful. I found myself completely enthralled through the entire book. So many crazy things happened in this family that I fully expected the last words of the book to be "just kidding." I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who loves a great read.

Honest Hollywood

Loved this book, I enjoyed every page spoken. Honestly written with no apologies. This family is a true example how to accept each other as is.

Thank You Griffin

Excellent read, fascinating, frank and endearing stories of the Dunne family. Wonderfully read by the author.

He tells it all, until he doesn’t…

Sometimes it was too graphic for me in all its detail, but he certainly kept it real. I enjoyed learning all the connections in his family which surely increased my knowledge, not just of the Dunne family but of Hollywood history. However, I want the second half!