Product Description

Having left behind a glitzy life in London, Rosie Richardson spends four years running a refugee camp in Africa. When aid agencies cautiously respond to a famine, she returns to London and breaks back into the celebrity circuit, in order to bring the stars out to Africa for a television appeal.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #274299 in Books
• Published on: 1995-06-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
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

Customer Reviews

A truly unputtable-down book; full of humour and sensitivity
After reading Bridget Jones' Diary, I scoured the bookshelves for another Helen Fielding offer and wasn't disappointed. If anything, Cause Celeb beat the Diary for depth and sincerity, but continued the real life drama and humour styles that left me with tears running down my face from both the pain and joy it evoked. Excellent read.

I read this book in 2 days, it's her best book yet!!
This book is wonderful, it is beautifully written, with all the warmth, humour and honesty of 'Bridget Jones's Diary' but so much more besides. It makes you feel happy and inspired and tearful. The characters are excellently portrayed and realistic and her descriptions and dialogue are humourous and poignant. When I finished it I wanted to read it all over again. Even if you didn't like 'Bridget Jones's Diary' read this book!!!

Better than Bridget Jones
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.