The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters

Little Brown and Company, 2004. Fine. Hollywood and leukemia are the two unlikely poles of this wrenching, tragic omic 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. A s the novel begins, she receives news that her younger sister, Madeline, re cently married and happily settled in the sisters' Ohio hometown, has been diagnosed with leukemia. Olivia herself is at loose ends, trying to jump-st art her career by putting together a big-budget production of Don Quixote. Impatient, ambitious and often caustic, Olivia is very different from her b ig-hearted, big-haired sister, and as she flies back and forth between Cali fornia and Ohio, she reflects on the choices she has made in long, searchin g 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 imp ressive is Robinson's unsentimental chronicling of the progress of Maddie's illness and the alternately heroic and selfish reactions of those around h er, including the sisters' mother, an anxious children's book writer, and t heir father, a retired attorney and alcoholic. Olivia's cynicism, compassio.