The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne Review: A Glittering, Grief-Struck Family Memoir

The Friday Afternoon Club, published by Penguin Press in 2024, is actor, director, and producer Griffin Dunne's account of his unconventional family and his own coming-of-age inside it. It is structured in two distinct parts: the first covers his family background, schooling, and entry into acting; the second turns to the family's life after the 1982 murder of his sister, the actress Dominique Dunne. Dunne opens with a prologue in which his mother, Ellen "Lenny" Griffin Dunne, receives a visit from Detective Harold Johnston bearing the news that Dominique has been strangled by John Sweeney — a nightmarish scene the narrative then circles back to, splitting the memoir into a harrowing before and after.

The scope is deliberately bounded: the memoir carries Dunne's life up to age 34 and the birth of his first child, tracing his privileged upbringing in Hollywood and Manhattan rather than attempting a cradle-to-present autobiography.

The Dunnes were not merely adjacent to literary and Hollywood fame; they were woven through it. Dunne's father was Dominick Dunne, the producer-turned-writer who covered the trials of O.J. Simpson, the Menendez brothers, and two Kennedy cousins for Vanity Fair — described in the book, per critical coverage' review, as "an Irish terrier in a Turnbull & Asser shirt." His uncle was the novelist and screenwriter John Gregory Dunne, making Joan Didion his aunt by marriage. His mother, Ellen, was the half-Mexican heiress to a rail car wheel company. Elizabeth Montgomery of Bewitched was his babysitter, Truman Capote attended his parents' tenth wedding anniversary party, Sean Connery pulled eight-year-old Griffin from drowning, and Carrie Fisher was his best friend.

What keeps this from reading as a celebrity Rolodex, critical coverage's review argues, is Dunne's narration: his self-awareness, honesty, and humour make him an engaging guide through material that could have been clunky. The publisher describes a memoir that finds "wicked humor and glimmers of light in even the most painful of circumstances," and the family portrait that emerges embraces characters the publisher calls loveable, infuriating, funny, and moving — the author most of all.

The memoir's second part reckons with Dominique Dunne's killing and its aftermath, including the criminal trial of John Sweeney. To the family's horror, Sweeney was convicted only of voluntary manslaughter and served three and a half years in prison. As critical coverage's reviewer notes, Dunne does not forgive his sister's killer, though the hate eventually burns itself out — and elsewhere in the book forgiveness becomes a recurring theme. This is the material that elevates the memoir from an entertaining Hollywood scrapbook into what the publisher frames as a deeply considered reckoning with the tragedy that exploded within the family. Readers should know going in that the book's rollicking first half gives way to genuinely painful territory: a violent death, a trial the family experienced as a miscarriage of justice, and a long aftermath of grief.

Reception has been strong and verifiable. The Friday Afternoon Club was an instant New York Times bestseller and was named a Best Book of the Year by TIME, NPR, People, Town & Country, and Air Mail. Critical coverage' own review called it a "warm and perceptive" memoir. Anderson Cooper praised it as a remarkable and moving story of a complex family "revealed with loving candor." The through-line across the notices is consistent: the famous names draw readers in, but the candor about the family's darkest chapter is what the praise centers on.

This is a memoir for readers who like their Hollywood insider stories grounded in real literary lineage and real stakes — admirers of Joan Didion and Dominick Dunne will find the family dynamics alone worth the price of admission, including the account of the long estrangement between brothers Dominick and John Gregory Dunne and their late-life reconciliation. It also suits readers of true-crime-adjacent memoirs, since the trial material is substantial rather than incidental. Those looking for a pure show-business comedy should be prepared for the tonal shift the two-part structure demands, and readers who prefer their celebrity memoirs lightly seasoned with names may find the density of famous faces — however well-handled — more than they bargained for. But as a portrait of privilege and misadventure permanently marked by loss, the published record supports the consensus: this is a family story told with wit, honesty, and unusual emotional range.