The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne review

A fond but frank memoir of an eccentric showbiz family shaped by tragedy

Early in this deft and multifaceted family memoir, Griffin Dunne admits that he has been known to tell the odd tall tale. His father was the journalist and author Dominick Dunne, and his aunt and uncle Joan Didion and John Dunne, so while most children might fabricate a story about an imaginary trip or pet, for example, Dunne’s family was privileged enough that he could invent a casual encounter with Jackie and John Kennedy at church and have it be believable. “I had been brought up on stories told by people who loved to tell stories,” he writes. And while he quickly learns not to trust anything he has heard, particularly from his father, the lies peel away to reveal a generous, starry book that veers into deeper emotional waters than your standard chronicle of well-connected Hollywood life.

Dunne is merely the latest in a long line of raconteurs and characters. There was the great-great-uncle who died in flagrante with his mistress on a yacht – his body was dressed in pyjamas and moved back to his hotel room on dry land, where his wife was told he had died in his sleep. There was the great-great-aunt who wed her lover just in time for them to attend her previous husband’s funeral as a married couple. But they are just the warm-up act for his immediate family: his father Dominick, his mother Ellen, or Lenny, and his siblings Alex and Dominique. The Friday Afternoon Club is named after the informal gatherings of actors Dominique would host each week. After she starred in Poltergeist, her career was very much in the ascendant when she was killed by a violent ex-boyfriend at the age of 22. Her death means the book dramatically shifts register about halfway through.