The Friday Afternoon Club

Reviews

“Rueful and diverting . . . Irish touchstones, such as wit, guilt and silence, are all here, spangled with late-20th-century Hollywood stardust . . . Heartbreaking and wry.” —Wall Street Journal

“Warm and perceptive . . . This book [has] many well-wrapped little gifts . . . [and] pockets of real depth." —The New York Times

“What makes these unimaginable events so readable, and allows Dunne to find a kind of grace even amid tragedy, are his unshakable black humor and unfailing nose for a good story . . . One might also detect the influence of Aunt Joan . . . Dunne, too, is a prospector for the incandescent detail.” —Los Angeles Times

“Griffin Dunne knows how to tell a story . . . Here he uses his authorial gifts—a filmmaker’s eye, photographic memory and way with a quip—to great effect, exploring how the seemingly charmed lives of the Dunnes unraveled.” —Washington Post

“Deft and multifaceted . . . A novelistic and compelling account of a life, and a self-deprecating guide to the Dunnes’s many highs and lows. It is a fond yet riveting family portrait.” —The Guardian

“A disturbing and hilarious account of his upbringing in a storied Hollywood dynasty.” —The Hollywood Reporter

“In this funny, revealing, and fascinating memoir, [Dunne] makes a strong case for himself as his storied family's latest brilliant writer . . . Despite the charm of his relationship with Carrie Fisher or making movies with Scorsese, the heart of Dunne's story is his family, including his late sister Dominique, whose murder (and the subsequent trial for it) is explored with tenderness and heart.” —Town and Country, Best Books of Summer 2024

“Full of wonderful tales. . . of light, life, and colour.” —The Guardian

“Dunne’s writing is vivid, openhearted, and full of a rich irony that inflects even the most emotional scenes . . . The result is a raucously entertaining homage to an unforgettable dynasty.” —Publishers Weekly

“Captivating . . . beyond entertaining, honest in confronting heartbreaks and jealousies, often genuinely funny, and somehow understated . . . Dunne's storytelling is buoyant, his prose crisp; he's most definitely a writer . . . Clear-eyed, heartfelt . . . Readers will hope for future books.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Searing and powerful . . . compelling in its honesty.” —Library Journal

“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 has given us a family history that is both humorous and heartbreaking. The Friday Afternoon Club is infused with the vitality that confidence in one's perceptions can bring and the ambiguity that accompanies the expense and strain of fame. Confessions of this order are works of art.” —Susanna Moore, author of Miss Aluminum
 
“Griffin Dunne has been entertaining people—both on-screen and off—all his life. And though you probably know him best as a gifted actor, make no mistake—Dunne is a real writer. The Friday Afternoon Club is a riveting and rollicking portrait of Dunne’s unconventional family as well as a deeply considered reckoning with the tragedy that exploded within it. He is honest about himself, generous with others, and insightful about every glittering and dark aspect of his richly lived years. He is also—like the best entertainers—ridiculously funny. This is just a wonderful memoir. Period.” —Alexandra Styron, author of Reading My Father
 
“The Friday Afternoon Club, Griffin Dunne’s singular memoir, is joyful, tragic, and resilient with a masterful, roving tone as varied as the actor-director-producer-author’s restless career. A self-described voracious reader and autodidact, Griffin renders the almost unbelievably American picaresque of his own and his family’s beginnings with a comic’s touch, and then has the spiritual maturity and writerly chops to handle both the looming tabloid heartbreak and its very personal, almost unbearable aftermath with unflinching honesty. Here is a talented man—flawed, injured, incomplete—a questing, charming, smart man taking on life (and death) day by day. His refusal of  ‘closure,’ the original Hollywood ending, is courageous and exemplary, and, like his father, and his aunt and uncle, and a host of unrecorded Irish American spinners of bittersweet tales in his colorful ancestry, Griffin takes his rightful place in a family and tradition of real writers.” —David Duchovny

“Despite the glamorous backdrops in California and New York, the author portrays a family whose core human experiences make them universally relatable . . . A poignant love letter and evidence that through it all, genuine love is the backbone that keeps a family strong.” —Kirkus (starred review) Expand reviews