The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne

The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne 

Read by Griffin Dunne 

12 hours, 19 minutes

Published June 2024 by Penguin Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

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.

My Thoughts: 

Back in 1985, the Big Guy and I went to a see a movie called After Hours, starring Griffin Dunne (and a cast of other well-known actors). It was odd (BG was prone to taking me to odd movies at the time), but I've never forgotten it or Dunne. But I've been more familiar, over the years, with his father, Dominick (a prolific author), and his sister, Dominique (who is best known for her role in Poltergeist and her murder), his uncle, John Dunne (who I knew through his aunt's book) and his aunt, Joan Didion. 

Even without that knowledge, if I'd have been walking through the bookstore and seen this book cover, I would definitely have picked it up. Doesn't it just scream "we have interesting stories to tell!"

And it does. From the years spent growing up among the movie and literary elite to his famous aunt to he and his sister's Hollywood careers to his father coming out as gay to his uncle's suicide to his friendship with Carrie Fisher, Dunne has lead a life filled with experiences that brought out every human emotion. He does a commendable job of telling his stories with humor and honesty. He doesn't hide away his own shortcomings nor those of his family and friends. 

It is his sister's death that captures the largest part of the book. Dunne details the toxic relationship she had with the boyfriend who killed her, the horror that was living through the subsequent trial (all while Dunne was filming Johnny Dangerously with Michael Keaton), and the fall out of the trial. Dunne reading the audiobook makes that period all the more heartbreaking. Strangely, though, all of this doesn't weigh down the book - by this point Dunne has already shared plenty of darkness. But even in that darkest of times, there were still moments of humor - humans seem to need that to survive times of trial and I could relate to that need. 

Did I judge a book by its cover? Yes, I did and this one lived up to the bar that cover set. And the book gave me exactly what the cover told me it would and so much more.