Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsEasy read, but sloppy factually
Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2024
This memoir is very readable, much like the Vanity Fair articles written by the author’s late father, writer Dominick Dunne. Unfortunately, it desperately needed a good editor and fact checker. There is no explanation as to why it is entitled “The Friday Afternoon Book Club”, and several of the second-hand anecdotes about the author’s father are easily proven inaccurate by simply reading Vanity Fair articles written by the father himself, which are readily available online, or the father’s own memoir. This book contains dozens of references to the author’s friend, Charlie, but never discloses Charlie’s last name. Then the book stops fairly abruptly after the author married and became a father some 35 years ago. The deaths of his parents and famous aunt and uncle feel like a postscript. As someone who has read extensively about many of the main people in the author’s life, I feel that this book barely skimmed the surface. So much of his story has already been more accurately told by Dominick Dunne and Joan Didion that I’m not sure what the author hoped to add in this sloppy memoir.