Cause Celeb

Rosie Richardson, short-skirted, under-appreciated Publicity Gel, dumps her egotistical, bullying, TV presenter boyfriend and heads to Africa to save the natives. But after four years in the plains, a plague of locusts and civil war take their toll, the frustrated and disillusioned Rosie is pushed back to her media-dahling roots in London.

Armed with a bucket full of will power, she fends off the determined amorous advances of her ex whilst trying to enlist his celebrity-pulling power to further her personal Cause Celeb: a Live Aid inspired celebrity television appeal to raise cash for food in the country she left behind.

Cause Celeb isn't exactly ground breaking but it does manage to bring a little gravitas to what is basically a novel about love, sex and a world where insincere celebs are fawned over by all and sundry. The descriptions of the African camp where Rosie spends four years of her life (concentrating on her career until a doctor--hunky, naturally--woos her over a few bloodied bodies) are vivid enough to force the dramatic irony forward as Rosie's past and present collide, and her jaded experiences of London life will certainly ring true for many readers.

All in all, Cause Celeb is the kind of book you might read in the bath or on the beach--not too taxing but involving and spirited enough to make you want to find out what happens in the end. --Susan Harrison

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View books by Helen Fielding.

Something a bit different. - Rated
Fielding writes well when she writes about girls in publishing, when our heroine Rosie, goes to Africa on a promotional trip her priorities change and she realises how shallow her life was in London, thus giving her the strength to walk away from her relationship to go and help in a refugee camp. Four years on and there is a potential crisis. The camps need food urgently and bureaucracy is getting in the way so Rosie takes matters in her own hands and uses her contacts to get a media appeal up and running.

I don't want to go into anymore details but the book is lovely, though it is emotional. Rosie's original London character is a bit pathetic, but she comes out the other side. The book is griping and entertaining but not particularly challenging, although the subject matter is a bit different from most books in the chick lit genre.

Better than Bridget Jones - Rated
Those who found the succès fou of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones books too fou for their taste may yet appreciate Cause Celeb.

This novel is not just for the Melissa Bank set but will also satisfy those who have graduated to Diane Johnson and Francine Prose. How ironic, then, that Fielding wrote Cause Celeb before Bridget Jones's Diary, and published it, in 1994, in Britain. Bridget Jones's many fans will recognize a prototype of their heroine in Cause Celeb's narrator and protagonist, Rosie Richardson. Rosie quickly tires of self-absorption and neurotic romance with a glamourous Londoner, and throws herself into famine relief in Africa. She is not so naive, however, as to try to escape her past, and ultimately the two strands of the tale become one. Rosie displays a keen sense of humor whether she is rubbing shoulders with show-biz personalities or muddling along in the refugee camp-and isn't humor exactly the quality that would enable a person to get through either situation more or less sane?

Don't worry: Cause Celeb doesn't play famine relief for laughs-or fawn over fashionable people who do their bit to help. This is a deft, subtle, admirable, pleasurable book.

Actually preferred the cassettes! - Rated
The cassettes, narrarated by Bernadette Quigley, are really fun. They carried me through a dull patch of a long car trip, Florida to Chicago! Her accents and spirit were really amazing, and gets better and better. This is def. a case of the cassette being better than reading it...I tried reading it about a month before the tapes, and had a hard time getting into it (usually it's the other way around for me).

The book isn't great over all, but it really has it moments, the narrator really has fun with it (at times she's just a hair away from a Monty Python skit, at other times, she's pretty intense).

I highly recommend this cassette OVER the book, for a fun, light and spirited car ride.

Brilliant - Rated
Couldn't put this one down. Easy to read and gripping, fast paced tale. Well done to Helen Fielding. More like this please.

Interesting but lost the plot in the middle as usual - Rated
Much much better than Bridget Jones, more thought provoking but nevertheless gripping to read despite the loss of plot in the middle part of the book. Still kept turning the pages, however, to see whether she would end up with the lust of her life!