Griffin Dunne's memoir The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir is shaped by his privileged upbringing in Los Angeles, as his family mingled with celebrities like Sean Connery and Natalie Wood. His boundless appetite for life and quest for connection manifests in stories about his friendship with Carrie Fisher and a teenage marriage in Tijuana, Mexico. Storytelling runs in his family too: his uncle, writer John Gregory Dunne, married Joan Didion, and his father, Dominick Dunne, later became a renowned crime writer. But this memoir is rooted in tragedy. In 1982, the author’s sister Dominique was choked by her ex-boyfriend, and she never regained consciousness. The publicity surrounding her killer's trial and sentence upended his family and, along with it, his sense of self. Dunne careens through the stages of grief, a raw nerve in search of meaning. Ultimately his story is a reminder that we only get so much time with the ones we love—so we have to make the most of it.
Buy Now: The Friday Afternoon Club on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Why Trump’s Message Worked on Latino Men
- What Trump’s Win Could Mean for Housing
- The 100 Must-Read Books of 2024
- Sleep Doctors Share the 1 Tip That’s Changed Their Lives
- Column: Let’s Bring Back Romance
- What It’s Like to Have Long COVID As a Kid
- FX’s Say Nothing Is the Must-Watch Political Thriller of 2024
- Merle Bombardieri Is Helping People Make the Baby Decision
Contact us at letters@time.com