The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters: A Novel [Paperback]

Elisabeth Robinson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 2004

Olivia Hunt is unemployed, living alone, and working on the fourth draft of her suicide note when she gets a phone call that lets her know what real trouble is. Madeleine Hunt is her younger sister, the annoyingly happy one who married the hometown guy while Olivia set out to conquer Hollywood, ha, ha.And Maddie is in trouble.Pulled home for the first time in years, Olivia gets a painful dose of real life as she tries to help her sister, keep her parents from running off the rails, and reconnect with the boyfriend who left without a word but might still be the love of her life. And, of course, the movie she's been trying to put in front of cameras for years heats up just as she leaves town. Racing between Hollywood, hospital rooms, and film sets in Spain, Olivia has to do the impossible at work and at home-and learns that love will let her do no less. By turns charming, heartrending, and hilarious, The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters is a novel for anyone who has ever loved a sister (or a great story).

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (January 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316735027
• ISBN-13: 978-0316735025
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (122 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,391,252 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny, poignant, and a fast read, January 12, 2004

By 

sb-lynn (Santa Barbara, California United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters: A Novel (Paperback)

I strongly recommend The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson .

You know, on first glance it gives the appearance of being a rather trivial book, because of both it's format; which consists entirely of faxes, letters, and emails, which make for a very quick read...and because of the subject matter; single 30+ female tries to produce her first movie and is dealing with assorted Hollywood stereotypes, ex-boyfriend, and sick sibling at the same time.

HOWEVER, this book really has some wonderful prose and is much more than a fun page-turner. The following quote from the book (a letter to her ex-boyfriend) was also in a review of the novel. It's an example of some of the beautiful writing which runs throughout this fine book:

"Maybe we're all born with a protective mental coating like a pomegranate seed has, an invisible placenta that prevents reality from piercing our tender brains, that allows us to fool ourselves until our last breath, that lets us actually believe that one day we'll be discovered and one day we'll be rich, one day the world will see our hidden genius, that lets me believe that somewhere in the recesses of your sweet heart and hard head you still care for me".

If you like this kind of writing, and want to get quickly involved in an interesting, sometimes funny/sweet /sad novel, this one is for you.

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The power of letters to tell a story, February 3, 2004

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters: A Novel (Paperback)

The T and OA of the Hunt Sisters is a powerful debut novel, and I'm glad I have a signed first edition. It was the recent selection of the First Edition Club of Book Passage, an iconic bookstore in Corte Madera, CA - and this book is a real winner.
The entire book is a collection of letters of wildly varying length from Olivia Hunt to all the various important people in her life: her sister (who is battling with leukemia in Ohio), her ex-lover (whom she still loves, but he's an artist in NM), and her best friend (who is trying to get pregnant). There are tons of short and hilarious, acerbic and sarcastic letters to Hollywood directors, actors, producers, money-lenders, etc., because Olivia wants to revive her flagging career by coordinating a big-budget production of Don Quixote, starring Robin Williams.
It's a strange juxtaposition of events that come together during the year plus a few months that these `letters' span, and by the end you care deeply about every single one of the characters. Don't miss it.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, Dazzling, Generous, and Sad., September 12, 2006

By 

Guillermo Amaro "& Ninoska Titinger" (Lima, PERU) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters: A Novel (Paperback)

This book is the result of very fine work balancing hilarity and heartbreak.
Elizabeth Robinson's 1st novel tells itself as a chronological compilation of emails, faxes, and letters from Olivia Hunt, a struggling Hollywood producer who is working on a remake of Don Quixote.

Her Hollywood career is about to sink and she goes through a series of hilarious events, like driving off with her ex boss' custom made butter yellow car and diving it into the ocean, only to be taken to jail for unruly behavior and stealing someone's car for a couple of hours.

Olivia's younger sister Madeleine is dying and Olivia writes stubborn, smart, and deeply moving emails and letters to and about her dying and defenseless sister.
Her letters are like music, they make you feel her moods, her doubts, her ideas and her dreams, they open up her world and her heart to you, and they are beautifully written and detailed with charm and lyrical quality.

This warm and fresh story is a reminder to all of us of how hope can grow in the darkest and hellish of places; of how it can make us want to fight for our dreams and our beliefs; of how Hope is Happiness.

Spontaneous, honest, warm, and sad.
A wonderful story of hope and fate.