I picked up this book in a charity shop, and to be brutally honest didn't expect that much, I found the Bridget Jones books ok although I couldn't actually finish the last one as I got so frustrated with the writing style. This is one of Helen Fieldings earlier books and I found I quickly got absorbed into the story. I can see from the main character Rosie show how the idea of Bridget developed - wanting to do well in her career, gets caught up with Oliver who is an emotionally stunted controlling bully... Its a carefully woven story about celebrity, love and devastating heartbreak of famine in Africa, there really are some shocking parts in this book and its clear that a lot of research took place to paint a credible and realistic picture. I found myself laughing at some of the lines one minute and being on. The bring of tears the next. I just really enjoyed this book, didn't want to put it down and that says it all.

Wow. This story was such a jumble. We open with Rosie working with refugees in Africa. This is interspersed with stories of her life in London, dating a celebrity and being involved in an emotionally abusive relationship. I felt like Helen Fielding couldn't quite decide which story she wanted to tell so she tried to have the best of both worlds.

Anyway the rest of the plot is that Africa is on the brink of a terrible famine and the government won't help. So Rosie returns to London to get the celebrities to take up the cause and help with money and donations. I think that the celebrities were brought in so that they could be comic relief. We could look at people who were adored by the public and see how they were fame mongerers or extremely vain or whatever. But they were all the same caricature and I would constantly get them confused.

The characters in Africa who were the genuine relief workers, including the doctor who was supposed to be Rosie's romantic interest were not as fleshed out. All we knew is that they were the good guys and once in a while something funny happened. Like when the head of the organization comes for a surprise visit and overhears not one, but two different couples fight about who's having sex with who. Yes! How hilarious.

It was not a good book and I'm sorry because it had so much potential.

If you have read Fielding's Bridget Jones books--this is nothing like them (which I see as a plus). The characters are believable, face real dilemmas, are intelligent (but human) and are interested in more than their own small problems. Sadly, Fielding has apparently decided that writing trash is more rewarding. While the Bridget Jones' are (clearly) not my favorite, I was hoping that she might go back to writing something like this after exhausting the Bridget Jones frenzy. I was extremely disappointed however, when I read "Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination" (her latest, as far as I know). Maybe she had just one good book in her. Okay, maybe that's kind of harsh, since Fielding is a great commercial success, but when I read a book I like (such as Cause Celeb) and then other books by the author are less than mediocre- I am extremely disappointed. Which fits in with my theory that sequels are just an attempt to capitalize on the success of a book, by rewriting the same book (thus I avoid them like the plague, because who wants to read a new book that turns out to be the same book? If you really wanted to read the same book twice then you would read the same book twice (right?)...But it seems I am in the minority here, and I digress...
In summation-Casue Celeb=good, in contrast, anything else by Helen Fielding=sadly disappointing. This is what chick lit should be like (in my humble opinion).

What a strange book. On the one hand it's a pure chick-lit story about a naive woman in a sort-of relationship with a narcissist celeb, on the other hand it's a description of the hardships in an African refugee camp. The two are woven together, at first with flashbacks and in the end the storylines merge. It makes for an awkward book to be honest, I didn't know what to make of it. I'm sure this juxtaposition was intentional, but the chick-lit part got on my nerves, and it's never fun to wade through bureaucracy in Africa. After a while though the African part turned very grim, and I actually got interested in finding out what was happening there. Fielding gives credit to a number of NGOs, I gather that the picture she paints is based on reality. I tend to go for escapist literature, but her descriptions of this situation caught my interest and made me think about something I admittedly tend to avoid.
Still, it's not a book I either enjoyed or would recommend, the mix in genres just didn't work for me.

Before there was Bridget Jones and her diary, Helen Fielding gave us Rosie Richardson. For some reason, "Cause Celeb" didn't hit the public consciousness in quite the same way as "Bridget Jones' Diary" did, so Fielding had to wait for the huge success she was to have. But having read the original "Bridget Jones' Diary" and enjoying it quite a lot, an investigation of Fielding's back catalogue seemed appropriate, even allowing for the disappointments that were "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason" and "Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination".

It is 1985, a little after "Live Aid" and Rosie Richardson is stuck in a less than perfect relationship with Oliver Marchant, a TV personality and a not terribly nice chap. Following the break up of this relationship, she decides to head out to Nambula as a relief worker in the hope of a little peace and quiet. This is only a partial success, as while the people she is both working with and helping treat her better than Oliver Marchant, she has arrived in Nambula just before a crisis threatens to engulf the whole refugee camp. Rosie has to mingle her old life and her new one in order to help.

It's tricky to know how close to life the situation here is, so it's tough to tell how much suspension of belief is required. That said, given Fielding's history working with "Comic Relief" in Africa as a producer, it suggests she's seen this kind of thing in action and is writing at least partially from experience. Certainly both sides of the story; the self-serving interests of the celebrities living it up in London and the desperation and quiet dignity of the refugees in Africa do seem in keeping with what little I know of either. Ironically, most of my experience with the latter possibly comes from a Helen Fielding produced documentary,

Admittedly, as with all books of this type, there does seem to be a little bit too much happening, particularly towards the end, for it to be entirely real. However, much of it is well paced enough that you can imagine many of the circumstances as happening and this is certainly one of the more realistic examples of a chick-lit novel that I've read. Even in the London sections, Rosie's character isn't suddenly taking time out of nowhere and meeting for an all day chat over coffee or spending money that she has no obvious way of earning. Many chick lit characters have a lifestyle that would only happen to a Lottery winner or a wealthy person, whereas Rosie happens to have the kind of life that many of us actually could have. At least, for the most part.

Despite this realism, there are parts that don't sit quite right. Some of the characters from "Cause Celeb" are very similar to those from "Bridget Jones' Diary". Fans of the latter will note that Oliver Marchant is like Daniel Cleaver; Julian and Janey seem like some of the smug marrieds; Rhoda and Sharon could be swapped without much difference. Once these similarities become obvious, it starts to seem as if Fielding was just using this as a trial run for some of her ideas, mixing them in with some of real life experiences to turn them into a novel.

If you can put this to one side, however, as I was able to and as I'm sure Fielding fans will be happy to; this isn't a bad effort at all. It lacks much of the humour of "Bridget Jones' Diary", but given the setting for at least half of the novel, that's hardly surprising. What "Cause Celeb" also lacks is the over the top nature that was "Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination" and the forced feeling that pervaded "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason". "Bridget Jones' Diary" is a classic of chick lit that is unlikely to be easily bettered, by the same author or another, but "Cause Celeb" is comfortably Helen Fielding's second best novel.

If you've enjoyed Fielding's work before, this is a must read, purely to see her beginnings, which were actually quite impressive in their own right before being overshadowed. If you were as disappointed as I was after "Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination", this is the perfect tonic, showing that Fielding can write proper novels, not just diaries. If you're a fan of chick lit generally, this is also well worth a look on that basis, as the unusual setting of half the book makes it an interesting read, although many parts of the rest are fairly standard.

It's a book well worth supporting, so please read generously.

This review may also appear, in whole or in part, under my name at any or all of www.ciao.co.uk, www.thebookbag.co.uk, www.goodreads.com, www.amazon.co.uk and www.dooyoo.co.uk

Uncomfortable reading as someone who works in the charity sector. Thank goodness the bus loads of celebrities have stopped and we're working hard to balance the issues Fielding writes about because ultimately, we have to be a force for good, and that means maintaining dignity and not dehumanising people who have already battled too much.

Une lecture de peu d'intérêt...

I loved this book. It's been sitting on my book shelves for probably close to ten years and I finally read it. I'm glad that I did.

"Cause Celeb" was Helen Fielding's debut novel, in advance of her overwhelming success with "Bridget Jones's Diary" and its sequel. This book does not have the sparkle that the Bridget Jones twosome owns, but all the same elements are there and show the promise to come. The main character and narrator is Rosie Richardson, a literary publicist obviously chosen for her job because of her decorative function at literary events. She is not as shallow as her employer and celebrity friends believe, as events prove in the novel. Rosie lives in London, as the story begins, and meets many of the City's glitterati at publishing receptions, book fairs, hot restaurants, and the homes of the glamourous. She meets the incredibly handsome TV presenter Oliver Marchant who moves from her rich fantasy life to her real life. Marchant is a Jekyll-and-Hyde, seamlessly transitioning from caring boyfriend to demanding egotist. 'Dysfunctional' is not a sufficiently complex adjective to describe their relationship. When Rosie is with Oliver in one of his aggressive moments, she recognizes that he is poison; but she misses him and longs for him, both physically and as her own 'arm-candy', even when she knows she should be looking elsewhere and even when she knows he is with another woman.

Finally, she has enough and packs her bags, not simply to escape the London limelight and Oliver's rants, but to go to Africa as a volunteer to help refugees in a (fictional) border camp in a war-ravaged country called Nambula where famine and disease are constant. The story shifts back and forth between Rosie's London life as conditions with Oliver worsen and as the reader is gradually acclimated to her life in the refugee camp. The contrast is considerable because of the glitz factor but also because the generally warm, if eccentric, collection of characters at the refugee camp accentuates the frigid environment with Oliver in London. Rosie is the director of camp at Safila on behalf of the organization 'SUSTAIN'; and she shines spectacularly well at managing the complex politics, fund-raising, assessment of conditions, quantities of food and medicine, and the many organizations with their fingers in the mix. Her assistant Henry Montague has simply moved his marmalade-and-tea routines to the African desert; the occasional drama queen, he is still a capable administrator. Their doctor Betty is due to leave the camp to be replaced by the American Robert O'Rourke, who worked with nurse Linda previously in Chad (and, perhaps, has a relationship with her). Muhammad Mahmoud is a local who is not an official director of the camp but who has the skills and personality to rise to the occasion. Dr. O'Rourke arrives at Safila just in time for rumours of a locust plague, more famine, a huge influx of refugees, and a missing supply ship.

Rosie decides to lead an expedition to see these locusts and try to get an estimate of the expected number of refugees. She takes photos to try to twist the arms of the powers-that-be for supplies and aid. A tragedy occurs, and this event plus the sight of thousands of refugees and fields stripped by locusts cause Rosie to call on her media skills. She returns to London to organize an appeal in a very short time. During her absence from London, her celebrity 'friends' have forgotten her. But the rumour mill quickly kicks back into gear as her old boyfriend, the inconstant Oliver, is the leading famous face to step forward to help her organize the famine appeal for television. There are essential details--like getting a broadcasting satellite into position--plus the overwhelming concern about whether or not the starving refugees will show up to their party. Timing turns on a dime, while Rosie wrestles with her own heart over Oliver and the American doctor.

"Cause Celeb" is well worth reading, although I found I was at the middle of the book before it picked up steam and I got seriously interested. The book is filled with the comic twists associated with Fielding, but, because she spent time in Africa working in a relief camp herself, both the poignant and biting details feel very real. It is fun to watch Rosie turn from social butterfly to socially-conscious (and amazingly able) force of nature. It is also amusing to see in the book the reflection of celebrity faces that daily clamour for our contributions from the latest aid programs on TV.

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Really funny. Also an interesting time capsule. Some elements regarding humanitarian aid and celebrities still apply today but also worthwhile to read and see how some things have evolved too. It’s definitely a moment in time. She nailed the crazymaking behaviour of a narcissist (Oliver). It gets pretty ridiculous by the end but hey it is a satire so that’s alright. The last part felt rushed though in comparison to the well paced nature of the majority of the book. Made you feel Fielding’s editor must have been pressuring her to finish fast.

I actually bought this book when it was originally published, but I recall not feeling that impressed with it. For which I've come to feel guilty as I relish the Bridget Jones franchise. But it's not that this book is bad. It's not. It's just not great either. Frankly, it's simply average. And sometimes for some books, average is fine. And that very well may be the case here. It's just that I've seen the author do much better with other efforts so compared to those, this doesn't shine. On its own? A number of people may really enjoy it. I won't recommend it but I also won't tell people to stay away like I sometimes do. If you read it, I hope you like it.