The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters: A Novel - Hardcover

Elisabeth Robinson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316735027 ISBN 13: 9780316735025

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2004

Synopsis

An unemployed actress, Olivia Hunt is forced to leave Hollywood to return home at the request of her younger sister, Madeleine, and finds herself struggling to help her sister, keep her parents under control, and reconnect with an old boyfriend, all the while attempting to balance her newly energized film career with her family needs. A first novel. 100,000 first printing.

About this title

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 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 this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0316735027
• ISBN 13: 9780316735025
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336