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The Friday Afternoon Club is really two books and to be honest part one which deals with Griffin Dunne’s early years growing up in Hollywood I wasn’t too interested in. Griffin’s father Dominick Dunne was a successful TV executive at the time who threw fabulous parties. Griffin’s aunt is the brilliant writer Joan Didion and so Griffin and his siblings Alex and Dominique got to meet these famous movie stars, musicians and writers at an age too young to really appreciate who they were. Although Griffin retains fond memories of Sean Connery who rescued him from drowning at one of his family’s pool parties.
There are alot of stories like that in the first part of the Friday Afternoon Club. Griffin is not name dropping to impress the reader this was simply his childhood and he wanted to get these stories down on paper. Still, I am not that interested in the world of celebrities, parties, drugs, the children of celebrities etc and so I didn’t connect with part one.
But part two the second half of the book deals with the murder in 1982 of Griffin Dunne's sister Dominique Dunne and it is gripping. As Griffin says it changed his family forever. Dominique was a talented actress, a caring person, and she was only 22 when she was strangled to death by her former boyfriend. The murder trial was a travesty. The killer only served two and a half years in prison.
Griffin goes into detail about the trial and its aftermath and how his family coped. His family became closer which is so admirable because this isn’t always the case with families who experience tragedy or illness. In an interview for the book Griffin said that his family went through a dark season but that they pulled through “not by chance but by aggressively trying to pull through”
Griffin’s father, Dominick Dunne, became a bestselling author covering criminal trials for Vanity Fair and always standing up for the victims in his books. Griffin’s mother Ellen Dunne who suffered from MS, went on and founded Justice For Homicide Victims in California, an organization that has helped people fight for justice and deal with grief. Griffin Dunne’s parents are gone now but he remains close with his brother Alex and the book is dedicated to his brother.
Finally I liked the fact that with the exception of the defense attorney and the judge at Dominique’s trial, who Griffin is understandably still angry with, he deals kindly with the people in his life. And that is particularly true of his parents, his sister Dominique and his brother Alex. The Friday Afternoon Club is a loving tribute to his family and a book that will help others deal with grief and how to pull through.
I'm more familiar with his father than with him. His sister's murder is heartbreaking!
ReplyDeleteIt is heartbreaking and now that I have read Griffin's book I want to also read one of Dominick Dunne's books because he was a talented writer.
DeleteAgree a very harrowing experience and there has been quite a bit of tragedy in his family which he recounts as well.
ReplyDeleteI am not that familiar with this writer or his family, but it all sounds interesting. Is the book very long?
ReplyDeleteIt's 395 pages. I checked and it's the number one bestseller right now in biographies on Amazon. The first half of the book was so-so for me but part two is gripping.
DeleteI remember when Dominique Dunne was murdered. So incredibly awful. I've tried reading both Dominck Dunne and Joan Didion, and except for Year of Magical Thinking, neither clicked for me. I don't imagine I will read this one, but I definitely enjoyed reading your review. Well done.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jane. I haven't read Dominick Dunne but I want to give him a try. I have made attempts to read Didion but haven't followed through. But the Year of Magical Thinking is her masterpiece and I should give that a read.
DeleteGreat review Kathy. I recently listened to Griffin being interviewed about his book by the NYT book editor and it was a great listen ... so I hope to read it too. You got to the book quickly. I am a big Didion fan so I need to read this for that reason too. I liked Griffin in the movie American Werewolf in London which is a fun movie, scary too. I hope he mentions that movie. I feel for his family and the tragedy that befell them. It's terrible to even think about. Still awful all these years later.
ReplyDeleteThanks Susan. Joan Didion is not mentioned too much but she comes off very well in the book as does the rest of his family. He was also very close to Carrie Fisher and remembers her with warmth and humor. Agree what hapoened to Dominique was so unfair.
DeleteThis sounds very interesting. I worked in publishing for Bantam which published some of the elder Dunne's books so I knew there had been a tragedy but not much else.
ReplyDeleteI am also a fan of the Starbridge books although I also find them very unusual and not always plausible. Still, I was very sorry that she stopped writing! I had to own copies of all of them although have not reread for years.
It is an interesting book and growing up Griffin Dunne met every celebrity there was too meet because his father thew fabulous parties. But is the second part of the book that is gripping.
DeleteI am a big fan of the Starbridge series although I read up to book 5 and never followed through on book 6 which is a mistake. The good thing is that Susan Howatch wrote other books including a
sort of sequel to Starbridge set in the 1980's and 1990's.
I never made the connection between him and Dominick Dunne for some weird reason. I read one of Dominick's books on the murder and was taken by the impact that terrible event had on him but that was a long time ago. What a travesty that whole trial and its aftermath must have been. People to often forget the survivors of someone who has been murdered, and Dunne made sure that didn't happen in this case.
ReplyDeleteI want to read something by Dominick Dunne. The trial really was a travesty and the judge did not let in key evidence about the killer's violent behavior towards his girlfriend prior to Dominique. The jury never heard it and so the killer's been free for decades and it's so wrong.
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