THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

'Warm and perceptive' New York Times

'So honest and funny and smart' Observer

'Griffin Dunne knows how to tell a story' Washington Post

'Dunne is a prospector for the incandescent detail' Los Angeles Times

'Full of light, life and colour...a startling tale of precarious American privilege, spotlighting a family that is blessed and cursed' Guardian

At eight, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion's legendary LA launch party for Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. In his early twenties, he shared a Manhattan apartment 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 selling popcorn 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 bestselling author of true crime narratives.

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.

"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

"So honest and funny and smart...What a guy, I kept thinking, as I wolfed his book down" - Observer

"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

"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