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The instant New York Times bestseller and named a Best Book of the Year by TIME, NPR, People, Town & Country, and Air Mail.

“Warm and perceptive.” —New York Times

“Griffin Dunne knows how to tell a story.” —Washington Post

“Dunne is a prospector for the incandescent detail.” —Los Angeles Times

“What a remarkable and moving story filled with twists and turns, the most famous of faces, and a complex family revealed with loving candor. I was blown away by Griffin Dunne’s life and his ability to capture so much of it in these beautifully written pages.” —Anderson Cooper

In this captivating memoir, actor and filmmaker Griffin Dunne shares an extraordinary life grown out of the drama, tragedy, and absurdities of Hollywood and Manhattan. Filled with sharp humor and emotional insight, The Friday Afternoon Club brings readers along on Dunne’s remarkable journey—from a childhood surrounded by unforgettable personalities to his coming-of-age amid celebrity and tragedy.

At eight years old, Griffin was rescued from drowning by Sean Connery himself. At thirteen, desperate for a chance encounter with Janis Joplin, he attended the now-legendary Los Angeles launch party thrown by his aunt and uncle—literary icons Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne—for Tom Wolfe’s groundbreaking book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. By sixteen, he had been expelled from boarding school, putting an abrupt end to his formal education. In his early twenties, Dunne shared a Manhattan apartment with his best friend and confidante Carrie Fisher, just as she was filming an obscure sci-fi flick known as Star Wars, while he struggled to launch his acting career, selling popcorn at Radio City Music Hall. Just a few years later, Dunne became both producer and star of Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed noir comedy, After Hours.

Yet pain and tragedy shadowed the glamour of Dunne’s early adulthood. When Griffin’s sister Dominique Dunne, a promising young actress, was tragically murdered at age twenty-two by her violent ex-boyfriend, the subsequent trial became a sensational miscarriage of justice and an infamous spectacle throughout the 1980s. Defying heartbreak, their father, Dominick Dunne, transformed devastation into advocacy, becoming renowned as a crime reporter for Vanity Fair and an outspoken victims’ rights activist.

Covering dazzling highs and starkly profound lows, The Friday Afternoon Club transcends the typical celebrity memoir by offering an intimate, honest exploration of family and identity. With affectionate candor and dry wit, Griffin Dunne confronts the complexities, contradictions, and deep bonds that shaped his life and family—most especially himself.