Griffin Dunne on His Joyful and Tragic Family Memoir
21 June 2024 - 37 minsEvery family has its stories, and every family has its drama — and some families, like the one the actor and director Griffin Dunne was born into, have an excess of both. His uncle was the writer John Gregory Dunne, his aunt was Joan Didion and his father was Dominick Dunne, who became famous for his Vanity Fair dispatches from the trial of the man who killed his daughter (and Griffin’s sister) Dominique.
On this week’s episode of the Book Review podcast, Dunne talks about his book, “The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir.” Of waiting to write it until his father, uncle and aunt had died, Dunne said he needed the distance: “I had the perspective on just how remarkable those three were a...
Series Episodes
'The Great Gatsby' at 100
A century after “The Great Gatsby” was first published, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s slender novel about a mysterious, lovelorn millionaire living and dying in a Long Island mansion has become among the most widely read American fictions — and also among the most analyzed and interpreted. A.O. Scott joins host Gilbert Cruz this week to discuss Fitzgerald’s novel and its long afterlife.
31 mins
11 April Finished
Colum McCann on Undersea Cables and His New Novel "Twist"
In his new novel, “Twist,” the National Book Award-winning Irish writer Colum McCann tells the story of a journalist deep at sea in more ways then one: A man adrift, he accepts a magazine assignment to write about the crews who maintain and repair the undersea cables that transmit all of the world’s information. Naturally, the assignment becomes more treacherous and psychologically fraught than he had anticipated. On this week’s episode, McCann tells host Gilbert Cruz how he became interested in the topic of information cables and why the story resonated for him at multiple levels.
37 mins
4 April Finished
Book Club: Let's Talk About "We Do Not Part," by Han Kang
The novel “We Do Not Part,” by the Nobel laureate Han Kang, involves a pet-sitting quest gone surreal: It follows a writer and documentarian whose hospitalized friend beseeches her to take care of her stranded pet parakeet on an island hundreds of miles away. When she arrives, the writer finds not only the bird but also an apparition of her friend, who has a devastating history to tell. On this week’s episode, the Book Club host MJ Franklin discusses “We Do Not Part” with fellow Book Review editors Lauren Christensen and Emily Eakin.
49 mins
28 March Finished
Steven Soderbergh on His Reading Life (Rerun)
The director Steven Soderbergh has just released his second film of 2025: the spy thriller "Black Bag," starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett. In January 2024, Soderbergh spoke with host Gilbert Cruz about some of the more than 80 books that he read in the previous year. (This episode is a rerun.)
42 mins
21 March Finished
Spring Preview: A Few Books We're Excited For
Every season brings its share of books to look forward to, and this spring is no different. Host Gilbert Cruz is joined by Book Review editor Joumana Khatib to talk about a dozen or so titles that sound interesting in the months ahead.
31 mins
7 March Finished
