“One of the qualities I tried to emulate from my father, aunt, and uncle was the honesty they shared with readers about themselves,” says Griffin Dunne about his memoir, *The Friday Afternoon Club.*

Been There, Dunne That

Griffin Dunne reflects on his sister’s horrific murder, the making of Scorsese’s After Hours, his friendship with Carrie Fisher, and a colorful life in New York and Hollywood

By Jim Kelly

It is no secret that Griffin Dunne is a first-rate actor and director, but now we know he is a superb memoirist. The Friday Afternoon Club is everything an autobiography should be: beautifully written, highly perceptive (to a sometimes painful degree), candid, observational without being judgmental, and touching in unexpected and genuine ways.

The book’s subtitle, “A Family Memoir,” is apt, since Dunne writes as much about his parents (his mother, Lenny, and his father, Dominick Dunne), his aunt and uncle (Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne), and his sister, Dominique, who was murdered in 1982, as he does about himself. The book ends with the birth of his daughter, Hannah (the mother is Carey Lowell), and it is a cathartic moment for father and reader alike.