The Friday Afternoon Club

A generous, starry book that veers into deeper emotional waters than your standard chronicle of well-connected Hollywood...a novelistic and compelling account of a life, and a self-deprecating guide to the Dunnes' many highs and lows. It is a fond yet riveting family portrait * Guardian * So honest and funny and smart...What a guy, I kept thinking, as I wolfed his book down -- Rachel Cooke * Observer * A first-rate memoirist...It is no small thing to write a bereavement memoir with the shadow of Joan Didion over your shoulder, but Dunne does not suffer for the comparison...[a] wise, funny and generous book * The Times * A riveting memoir...moving and effective -- Roger Lewis * Mail on Sunday * 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 * Generous, funny and perceptive * Literary Review * Irish touchstones, such as wit, guilt and silence, are all here, spangled with late-20th-century Hollywood stardust . . . Heartbreaking and wry * Wall Street Journal * 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 * Booklist * 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) * 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 * Joyful, tragic and resilient with a masterful, roving tone as varied as the actor-director-producer-author's restless career -- David Duchovny 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 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 IN THE CUT and MISS ALUMINIUM