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.
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
Review
"Elisabeth Robinson's epistolary odyssey renders up ruthless Hollywood and the forgiving Midwest with pathos, precision, and unfailing wit." -- Jennifer Egan, author of LOOK AT ME
"This is one of the funniest Hollywood novels I've ever read." -- Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections
From the Inside Flap
"This is one of the funniest Hollywood novels I've ever read." (--Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections )
" Like a latter day Quixote, Elisabeth Robinson has taken on both in her first novel, and succeeded brilliantly...by turns hilarious and deeply moving." (--Jay McInerney, author of BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY and MODEL BEHAVIOR)
"Elisabeth Robinson's epistolary odyssey renders up ruthless Hollywood and the forgiving Midwest with pathos, precision, and unfailing wit." (--Jennifer Egan, author of LOOK AT ME)
"...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!" (--Adriana Trigiani, author of LUCIA, LUCIA)
About the Author
Elisabeth Robinson is an independent producer and screenwriter whose film credits include the award-winning films Braveheart and Last Orders. This is her first novel. She lives in New York.
