The best letters are the ones that tell you everything. Not just the big, important stuff, but the little details of life. The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters is a one-sided epistolary novel. We get to read all the letters written by Olivia Hunt, erstwhile film producer, over the year she learns her sister Maddie has cancer. Olivia scuttles between her hometown in Ohio, where Maddie still lives, and Los Angeles, where she's trying to get a film version of Don Quixote off the ground. Along the way, she writes newsy letters to her best friend Tina, crabby mash notes to her ex-boyfriend Michael, worried missives to her parents, breezy memos to (real-life) entertainment honchos, and cheery entertainments to Maddie herself. These epistles are crammed full of the asides and rambling descriptions that make for good letters, and good books. She writes, for instance, "I went down to the cafeteria. Judy, the cashier, told me her daughter passed the Bar exam, so that was nice to hear. She said I looked tired. I ate some iceberg lettuce with orange dressing in the empty cafeteria. And two chocolate chip cookies." It's not poetry, but the orange dressing and the chatty cashier go a long way toward capturing hospital life. It also helps that first-time author Elisabeth Robinson is a producer and screenwriter who worked on Braveheart (among others); she's just as detailed and knowing when she describes the seemingly Herculean task of producing a film. She includes gentle send-ups of Robin Williams and John Cleese, who star in the fictional picture, and terrifying glimpses of executive tantrums. (A Hollywood background has its downsides: the book occasionally strays into formula.) In the end, Robinson's hard work with all those details ultimately results in a believable, lovable heroine. --Claire Dederer


From Publishers Weekly
Hollywood and leukemia are the two unlikely poles of this wrenching, tragicomic first novel by independent producer and screenwriter Robinson. Pouring out her troubles in epistolary form, 34-year-old Olivia Hunt, a struggling film producer, chronicles a year of dizzying highs and devastating lows. As the novel begins, she receives news that her younger sister, Madeline, recently married and happily settled in the sisters' Ohio hometown, has been diagnosed with leukemia. Olivia herself is at loose ends, trying to jump-start her career by putting together a big-budget production of Don Quixote. Impatient, ambitious and often caustic, Olivia is very different from her big-hearted, big-haired sister, and as she flies back and forth between California and Ohio, she reflects on the choices she has made in long, searching letters to friends and family. Though she and her ex-boyfriend Michael, a painter living in New Mexico, are still in love with each other, they are both too devoted to their careers to settle down together. Just as it seems things might be patched up between them, Don Quixote swings into high gear and Olivia heads off to film in Spain. Her Hollywood adventures are pitch-perfect and hilarious, with Robin Williams ("like a beaver in a sweatshirt and jeans") and Jerry Bruckheimer, among others, making cameos. No less impressive is Robinson's unsentimental chronicling of the progress of Maddie's illness and the alternately heroic and selfish reactions of those around her, including the sisters' mother, an anxious children's book writer, and their father, a retired attorney and alcoholic. Olivia's cynicism, compassion and loyalty come through as funny, real and inspiring, and the novel's epistolary format is smoothly employed. Moving but never maudlin, this is an accomplished debut.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Robinson mixes Hollywood politics and sisterly affection in her moving, engaging debut novel. Olivia Hunt is trying to make it as a producer in Hollywood, but it's not going well. She's working with an extremely difficult director on a version of Don Quixote that somehow must be true to the book and commercially appealing. Things get much, much worse when Olivia learns that her younger sister, Maddie, has been diagnosed with leukemia. Maddie has chosen a very different life than Olivia; she's happily married and still living in the Ohio town they grew up in. Maddie is young and strong, and Olivia is determined to be upbeat for her sister, and herself. When the studio she used to work for (and was fired from) picks up the Quixote film, and Robin Williams and John Cleese sign on to star in it, Olivia's star appears to be ascendant. She also seems to have a shot at winning back Michael, the handsome ex-boyfriend she can't seem to leave behind. But when Maddie takes a turn for the worse and the movie hits a stumbling block, Olivia must be the strong one for her family, and somehow keep her movie afloat. Sparkling with humor and beauty, the novel is ultimately a testament to the bond between the sisters, and the strength of both Olivia and Maddie. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Olivia Hunt's Hollywood life has come to a grinding halt. A hotshot producer accustomed to first-class amenities, Olivia has just been unceremoniously fired after her last movie tanked. Her boyfriend, Michael, has dumped her. And she's not the blonde she used to be: dark roots are coming in at an alarming rate. Her next project is a well-crafted suicide note." "Then she finds out what real trouble is. Olivia's beloved sister, Maddie, is seriously ill. Maddie is living the life Olivia ran like hell from - she's happily married to her high school sweetheart and still living in the small town where they grew up. Stunned and bewildered, Olivia catches the next plane back home." Maddie's idealism and optimism have always driven Olivia crazy. Even now, when the odds aren't good, Maddie never doubts she'll beat them. But Olivia wonders, is hope just a way of kidding yourself? As if to answer that question, Maddie challenges Olivia to produce her dream film, the impossible-to-make Don Quixote. Olivia's life then becomes a tangle of movie sets, IV drips, and letters to Michael asking him what went wrong and if they might try again. When Maddie takes a turn for the worse, Olivia has to face the hardest choices life can offer. How can one person's heart so truly be in three places at once?

FROM THE CRITICS

USA Today

Over the course of about 200 letters (and a few e-mails), Robinson succinctly shows the full range of Olivia's emotions and relationships, from the optimism she tries to instill in her shocked family to the admiration she holds for Maddie's spouse. She poignantly portrays the frustration of trying to sustain a relationship while engaged in a consuming profession. —Edward Nawotka

The New York Times

In both her movie and her life, Olivia struggles to provide her sister and herself with an ideal ending -- a perfect moment that will satisfy everyone. But, finally, this book is a paean to the compromises made out of love: Olivia may be an unreliable narrator, but as a storyteller she comes through in the clutch. — Emily Nussbaum

Publishers Weekly

Hollywood and leukemia are the two unlikely poles of this wrenching, tragicomic first novel by independent producer and screenwriter Robinson. Pouring out her troubles in epistolary form, 34-year-old Olivia Hunt, a struggling film producer, chronicles a year of dizzying highs and devastating lows. As the novel begins, she receives news that her younger sister, Madeline, recently married and happily settled in the sisters' Ohio hometown, has been diagnosed with leukemia. Olivia herself is at loose ends, trying to jump-start her career by putting together a big-budget production of Don Quixote. Impatient, ambitious and often caustic, Olivia is very different from her big-hearted, big-haired sister, and as she flies back and forth between California and Ohio, she reflects on the choices she has made in long, searching letters to friends and family. Though she and her ex-boyfriend Michael, a painter living in New Mexico, are still in love with each other, they are both too devoted to their careers to settle down together. Just as it seems things might be patched up between them, Don Quixote swings into high gear and Olivia heads off to film in Spain. Her Hollywood adventures are pitch-perfect and hilarious, with Robin Williams ("like a beaver in a sweatshirt and jeans") and Jerry Bruckheimer, among others, making cameos. No less impressive is Robinson's unsentimental chronicling of the progress of Maddie's illness and the alternately heroic and selfish reactions of those around her, including the sisters' mother, an anxious children's book writer, and their father, a retired attorney and alcoholic. Olivia's cynicism, compassion and loyalty come through as funny, real and inspiring, and the novel's epistolary format is smoothly employed. Moving but never maudlin, this is an accomplished debut. 10-city author tour. (Jan. 7) Forecast: Robinson's novel is clearly autobiographical-her own sister suffered from leukemia, and Robinson herself once worked on a movie project based on Don Quixote (it never got off the ground). The publisher's 100,000-copy printing might seem ambitious, but the story's intensity and honesty should captivate readers. 10-city author tour. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

As a Hollywood producer, Olivia has suffered through her share of bad movies, but now her own life rivals the worst box office bomb. She has lost her job at Universal Pictures, is on the verge of being evicted, and has been dumped by her true love when she learns that her sister Maddie has leukemia. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

It's bright, it's clever, and it's going to be a major hit: a smashing success with the press and the public. Movie producer Robinson's semi-autobiographical debut about a Hollywood movie producer whose sister Ohio gets leukemia is already garnering press as the women's tearjerker of 2004. And understandably so. Olivia, 34, is struggling unsuccessfully to produce a film adaptation of Don Quixote and contemplating the happier aspects of suicide when she receives word that her younger, newly married sister Maddie has been diagnosed with leukemia. Through Olivia's letters-to her parents; best friend Tina and her ex- but still-loved boyfriend Michael; even to big-name Hollywood celebrities she wants involved in her film-we follow the ups and downs of Maddie's illness as well as the ups and downs of Olivia's career and love-life. The very studio that fired Olivia only a short time earlier agrees to produce Quixote, and Olivia's movie ambitions take off. From Hollywood and from locations in Europe, she travels back and forth to Shawnee Falls to be with her family, and the contrasts and connections between the two worlds lie at the novel's heart. In Ohio, Olivia witnesses her reticent mother and alcoholic father's long marriage in a new light. Maddie herself is down-to-earth and spunky throughout her treatments, side-effects, false hope of remissions, and ultimate downward spiral. Her religious husband is a rock. Michael, a painter who is handsome and wonderful but wants her to live with him in New Mexico, visits and beckons Olivia back, but her ambition resists. Meanwhile, Hollywood politics turn ugly, but despite a slight bout of craziness when she steals the car of her nemesis and drives itinto the ocean, Olivia perseveres. She hires a new, handsome director. Don Quixote, starring Robin Williams (bound to make a cameo in the film adaptation) opens to good reviews if not great numbers. Maddie dies gracefully, leaving behind a legacy of love. "You'll laugh, you'll cry": Robinson is enormously skilled at pushing the emotional buttons, but an aftertaste of manipulation lingers. There's also something self-serving about the writing, something frankly very Hollywood about it. But will it sell? Is there balm in Gilead? First printing of 100,000

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Jay McInerney

Like a latter day Quixote, Elisabeth Robinson has taken on both in her first novel, and succeeded brilliantly...by turns hilarious and deeply moving. — author of BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY and MODEL BEHAVIOR

Jennifer Egan

Elisabeth Robinson's epistolary odyssey renders up ruthless Hollywood and the forgiving Midwest with pathos, precision, and unfailing wit. — author of LOOK AT ME

Adriana Trigiani

a story to treasure...sisters everywhere will rejoice in the beautifully drawn characters of Olivia and Maddie, who are so real...you never want to let them go. I loved it! — author of LUCIA, LUCIA

Jonathan Franzen