For those less well-versed than me in the world of high 1980s Hollywood and its various satellites – or do I mean parasites? – it may be useful if I begin this review with a brief biography of the book’s author. Griffin Dunne: does the name ring any bells? It probably should, but let me elaborate anyway. Dunne is an actor (An American Werewolf in London) and a producer (Baby It’s You, After Hours). His father was Dominick Dunne, Vanity Fair’s star reporter in its pomp under Tina Brown, and his mother was Ellen “Lenny” Griffin, an heiress who was close to Natalie Wood. His uncle was John Gregory Dunne, another writer, who in turn was the husband of Joan Didion, the celebrated author of such nonfiction classics as The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Elizabeth Montgomery from Bewitched was his babysitter. Truman Capote was a guest at his parents’ 10th wedding anniversary party. Carrie Fisher was his best friend.

But The Friday Afternoon Club, a memoir of Dunne’s life until, at 34, he has his first (and only) child, isn’t just another celebrity Rolodex. For one thing, there’s the way it’s written, so honest and funny and smart. Dunne handles everything – and everyone – with the scabrous aplomb of the outsider, something that he most definitely is not; his tone is a little bit Holden Caulfield (The Catcher in the Rye), and a little bit Benjamin Braddock (The Graduate), with a few icy chips thrown in – picture me now, jiggling a delicious aperitif in my hand – that might have come straight from one of the notebooks of his late aunt Joan (more on these frozen shards later). What I mean is that on the page, he’s both adorable and exasperating: if he’s Tigger-ish and easily bored, he’s also nobody’s fool. Always the first to laugh at himself, he is utterly lacking in self-pity.

What makes all this the more remarkable is the fact that at the heart of his book lies near-unimaginable pain and suffering. With huge daring, Dunne gives the reader a detailed, highly intimate account of the circumstances surrounding the death in 1982 of his 22-year-old actor sister, Dominique, who was strangled by her abusive ex-boyfriend, John Sweeney, without ever allowing it to derail the picaresque adventures he describes elsewhere. It should be as clunky as hell, this combination, but somehow it never is, perhaps because Dunne has known ever since he was a young man (he’s 69 now) that even when people are in darkness, they are still apt to make jokes, and sometimes to cry with laughter – and he won’t shy away from it. Doubtless the reader does exist who will find it strange and bewildering that as Sweeney’s trial proceeds, Dunne spends the hours when he’s not in the courtroom doggedly making a movie and almost cheerfully working his way through a sheet of LSD prepared especially for him by Timothy Leary (a present from an ever-thoughtful Fisher). But most will find it both bracing and incredibly human. I know that I did. What a guy, I kept thinking, as I wolfed his book down. And: what would his publicist think if I asked to take him out for lunch the next time he’s in London?

Dunne seems to like lunch, in the same way that he likes almost everything: if character is destiny, his nature is generous and grateful. But this doesn’t mean that he isn’t also clear-eyed. His account of Dominick Dunne’s fall from grace in Hollywood, where he worked first as a producer, is straightforward to the point of briskness, and all the more loving for it (this descent, which saw him selling all his possessions and living in a cabin in Oregon, was born of alcoholism and, perhaps, of his secret gay life); nor does he hide how uncomfortable it makes him that his father’s second act, as the kind of journalist who was never off the TV talkshows, came about only because he covered Sweeney’s trial for Vanity Fair. Fame, as he makes plain, is corrosive: it changes friendships; it feeds narcissism. His pen portraits of everyone from Sean Connery (who once saved him from drowning) to Tennessee Williams (who groped him at a dinner party) are as deft on this score as his accounts of his own disasters; of the public scrapes and hilariously bad decisions that trail him as a cloud of dust does Pig-Pen in Peanuts (yes, he really did star in a film about a man whose penis chats to him).

He doesn’t forgive his sister’s killer – to the horror of the Dunnes, Sweeney was convicted only of voluntary manslaughter, for which he served just three and a half years in prison – but his hate burns itself out in the end; that, or he somehow lets go of it. Elsewhere, though, forgiveness becomes a theme. I hadn’t realised that Dominick Dunne was on such bad terms with his brother, an enmity that only grew when John elected to take Joan and their daughter, Quintana, to Paris for the duration of Sweeney’s trial on the grounds that they didn’t want Quintana called as a witness – a decision that puts a new light on them entirely, I think (especially Joan, who was so praised in the last years of her life for her stoicism after the deaths of both John and Quintana, she began to take on the air of a medieval saint). There’s something horribly gelid here – later, John makes the situation worse by writing in the New Yorker of his unaccountable disdain for those who attend the trials of those accused of murdering “their loved ones” – and yet, somehow, Dunne finds a way past his, never quite falling out with his aunt and uncle himself.

Perhaps, it occurs to me now, this is why his 2017 documentary, Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, is so good: even as it honours its subject, a chill rises from it, as if from a lake in wintertime. Certainly, it’s what makes The Friday Afternoon Club (named after the gatherings Dominique held at her pool house in LA) so much more than the book you feared it might be. He doesn’t spell anything out, save for his own ridiculousness. But he doesn’t need to. The reader draws her own conclusions: feasting on the glamour, laughing at the absurdity, shivering as the icebergs float silently into view.

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• The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir by Griffin Dunne is published by Grove Press (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

The broadcaster Greg James has apologised after being criticised over a promotional video for his followup to the Roald Dahl novel The Twits, in which it was suggested giving one of the principal characters a glass eye would make her disgusting.

In the video, James appeared with his colleague Chris Smith and the illustrator Emily Jones, as she rendered the characters the other two have written about. They listed several traits they felt would make them more unpleasant, including the addition of the glass eye, which Mrs Twit had in the original novel.

“We are so sorry to have caused offence with the launch video,” James said. “It was absolutely not our intention. And we apologise unreservedly. It’s now gone. We understand that words matter and we pride ourselves on championing and welcoming everyone into the magical world of children’s books.

“It’s unfortunate that the word disgusting appears to be a direct comment on that,” James added. “That’s an error on our part. We are devastated that it’s come across like this but completely understand why there is anger.”

According to Mail Online, the Royal National Institute of Blind People had criticised the promotional video. “When there’s positive representation of disabilities in children’s books, a truly wonderful thing happens – children with disabilities feel seen and heard, and their friends and classmates treat everyone the same,” it said. “There is nothing at all revolting about prosthetic eyes, we think they’re brilliant.

“We strongly urge all authors, illustrators, or publishers to think about the influence they have and the role they can play in encouraging acceptance and understanding of disabilities, both visible and invisible, especially for children with vision impairments.”

The Twits and Matilda are among the Roald Dahl characters set to appear in brand new stories inspired by the late British author’s work, due to be published later this year.

Stories written by James, Adam Kay and Konnie Huq will celebrate Dahl’s “unique sense of the extraordinary, the magical and the mischievous”, said Ruth Knowles, the publishing director at Puffin.

James and Smith have co-written a story titled The Twits Next Door, illustrated by Jones, to be published in August. When the Lovelies move in next door to Mr and Mrs Twit, the Twits try to rid themselves of their “horribly nice” new neighbours.

Meanwhile, a festive collection, Charlie and the Christmas Factory, is planned for October, comprising 12 short stories based on the favourite Dahl characters of the collection’s authors. These include Huq, Kay, Adam Hills, Ben Bailey-Smith, Elle McNicoll, Sibéal Pounder and Nadia Shireen among others.

In McNicoll’s story, Matilda is worried about being on the naughty list, while Pounder looks at how Charlie plans to celebrate Christmas at the chocolate factory. In Kay’s tale, set years after the creation of George’s marvellous medicine, his granddaughter Gigi decides to make her own potion.

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“We have been so impressed by the authors’ brilliant ability to capture the unique spirit of a Roald Dahl story and bring us some wonderfully funny tales of their own imagination,” said Harriet Murphy, the publishing director at the Roald Dahl Story Company. “Roald Dahl’s stories are among some of the greatest children’s books, but we aren’t looking to imitate him. Instead, we wanted the authors to have fun and to use their own voices to take his extraordinary characters and creations into new stories.”

The collection will be illustrated by Rikin Parekh. “Of course, I am a firm believer in the magic that is created when words and illustrations blend perfectly,” he said. “And no combination is as magical as that of Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake.”

The first in a series of picture-book versions of Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes will be released in May, with illustrations by Adam Larkum.

Date and Time

October 26, 2023
2:00–3:00 p.m. ET

Location

Virtual or in-person at the Neuroscience Center building, 6001 Executive Boulevard, Bethesda, MD 20892

Overview

During this lecture, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Ph.D.  will discuss the health impacts of having or lacking social connection. The COVID-19 pandemic raised awareness about loneliness but also revealed gaps in our understanding of the individual and public health impacts of social connection. Dr. Holt-Lunstad will draw upon her own work, her work with the U.S. Surgeon General Advisory, and the broader scientific literature, to highlight the scope of the issue, evidence of health implications, and challenges and opportunities for translating this evidence into practical solutions and policy.

About Dr. Holt-Lunstad

Dr. Holt-Lunstad is a psychology and neuroscience professor and director of the Social Connection and Health Lab at Brigham Young University. She is also the founding scientific chair and board member for the U.S. Foundation for Social Connection and the Global Initiative on Loneliness and Connection.

Dr. Holt-Lunstad is an international expert focused on the individual and population health effects, biological mechanisms, and strategies to mitigate risk and promote protection associated with social connection. Her work has been seminal in recognizing social isolation and loneliness as early mortality risk factors. As the lead scientific editor for a U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory and Framework for a National Strategy, her work also focuses on translating evidence into practice and policy.

About the Director’s Innovation Speaker Series

NIMH established the Director’s Innovation Speaker Series to encourage broad, interdisciplinary thinking in developing scientific initiatives and programs and to press for theoretical leaps in science over the continuation of incremental thought. Innovation speakers are encouraged to describe their work from the perspective of breaking through existing boundaries and developing successful new ideas, as well as working outside their primary area of expertise in ways that have pushed their fields forward. We encourage discussions of the meaning of innovation, creativity, breakthroughs, and paradigm-shifting.

Sponsored by

Division of Extramural Activities

Registration

This event is free, but you must register to attend .

Contact

InnovationSpeakers@mail.nih.gov

More information

Closed captioning and a sign language interpreter will be provided for this event.