The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne review

The actor’s star-studded memoir-cum-account of his sister’s murder could have been a clunky read, but his self-awareness, honesty and humour make the nephew of Joan Didion and son of Dominick Dunne an engaging narrator

For those less well-versed than me in the world of high 1980s Hollywood and its various satellites – or do I mean parasites? – it may be useful if I begin this review with a brief biography of the book’s author. Griffin Dunne: does the name ring any bells? It probably should, but let me elaborate anyway. Dunne is an actor (An American Werewolf in London) and a producer (Baby It’s You, After Hours). His father was Dominick Dunne, Vanity Fair’s star reporter in its pomp under Tina Brown, and his mother was Ellen “Lenny” Griffin, an heiress who was close to Natalie Wood. His uncle was John Gregory Dunne, another writer, who in turn was the husband of Joan Didion, the celebrated author of such nonfiction classics as The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Elizabeth Montgomery from Bewitched was his babysitter. Truman Capote was a guest at his parents’ 10th wedding anniversary party. Carrie Fisher was his best friend.

But The Friday Afternoon Club, a memoir of Dunne’s life until, at 34, he has his first (and only) child, isn’t just another celebrity Rolodex. For one thing, there’s the way it’s written, so honest and funny and smart. Dunne handles everything – and everyone – with the scabrous aplomb of the outsider, something that he most definitely is not; his tone is a little bit Holden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye), and a little bit Benjamin Braddock (The Graduate), with a few icy chips thrown in – picture me now, jiggling a delicious aperitif in my hand – that might have come straight from one of the notebooks of his late aunt Joan (more on these frozen shards later). What I mean is that on the page, he’s both adorable and exasperating: if he’s Tigger-ish and easily bored, he’s also nobody’s fool. Always the first to laugh at himself, he is utterly lacking in self-pity.