Cause Celeb

Rating:
Summary: Not Bridget but Rosie is still riveting!
Review: Fans of Helen Field's Bridget Jones series will be surprised to learn that Cause Celeb was actually published in England prior to the Jones series but they will certainly not be disappointed by the book. While written in the traditional style of a novel (unlike Bridget Jones) - readers will still find a place in their hearts for Cause Celeb's leading lady - Rosie Richardson.

After an unsuccessful relationship with a hotshot newscaster, Oliver, and a life filled with his celebrity friends and enemies, Rosie is sick of her life - sick physically and emotionally and takes a leap of faith to Africa to work in a refugee camp. Rosie realizes that her past life in London might actually help her cause in Nambula and help the refugees get the attention, money and aid that they need - with a little chutzpah and ingenuity Rosie calls on her old friends to help with a TV benefit - along the way she realizes that her heart has mended and her life is more full and rewarding than she could have ever imagined.

Readers will revel in the writing style and situations that Helen Fielding has made famous in her Bridget series but will be delighted to discover a much more grounded and resourceful heroine - one that we could aspire to be. All in all, Cause Celeb is a great read and will keep fans busy while waiting for the next Bridget installment.

Rating:
Summary: Another winner from Ms. Fielding!
Review: Make no doubt about it, THIS IS NOT BRIDGET JONES! Set your mind up to believe that and you'll adore this gem of a book as well. Fielding writes with great detail, passion, and humor. The book is divided into two settings, England and Africa. The main character Rosie Richardson is the link between the two. She starts out as an employee for a 'glossy' magazine. She meets many celebrities and has a celeb boyfriend, however finding her life overly stressful and slightly unmeaningful, she decides to leave her life in England behind and go to work in Africa. When a famine and locusts threaten to wipe out thousands of people near her camp, Rosie returns to England in order to strike up support and raise money for the cause. This book will keep you interested and perhaps get you motivated to make a change in your daily routine. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Viva la Cause Celeb!

Rating:
Summary: A Mature Bridget Jones
Review: The London sections are as funny and prone to mishaps as in "Bridget Jones Diary." Oliver and Rosie's relationship is true to life in a sad sort of way since it is based on a hot-and-cold power struggle. Rosie tries to fit with the "famous club" but isn't cut out.

In Africa she is needed. Well, actually, she thought about how much Africa would do her good, and then she found out how much good she could do for Africa. She is in charge and has friends. She even is falling for the new Medic. But impending doom from locusts may cause a famine and the only hope is a television plea to the public for aid. Every Cause must have a Celeb to succeed. So, off again to London to try to convince her Famous Club to help.

Rosie retains her new self esteem through all the hot-and-cold power plays of Oliver. Again, Bridget Jones but with a point other than finding the right guy. This was an excellent book with political and moral questions woven discreetly into the narrative.

Rating:
Summary: An incredible surprise!
Review: After reading the Bridget Jones novels, I couldn't wait to read another Helen Fielding novel. What an incredible surprise! This book does have it's Bridget-esque moments, but I found it to be much more mature and touching than Fielding's later efforts (Cause Celeb was published in '94). People who are wanting a romantic, funny romp like the BJD books will be very surprised. While the book has it's funny moments, I was more moved by Fielding's harrowing descriptions of what Rosie, the workers, and refugees go through. I found Rosie's trip to the capital of the African country horrifying and touching at the same time. As much as I love Bridget Jones, I would have to say that this story is much more engrossing and touching, and I hope that many people check out this well-written first novel by Helen Fielding.

Rating:
Summary: Bridget and Rosie: Twins Under The Skin?
Review: Andy Warhol is known for stating that everyone gets their "15 Minutes" of fame. Most of us dream about being famous; for some, it becomes an obsession. Tis what 'Cause Celeb' is about. By now, eveyone has either read, or heard of, Helen Fielding's previous books about Bridget Jones. If, however, you're expecting 'Bridget Jones' Diary: part 3', you are out of luck. Though written in similar narrative style, this book is quite different.

Rosie Richardson is twenty-something, and has an immense crush on Oliver Marchant, a handsome (but incredibly spoiled and vain) newscaster. As many women can relate, you meet a guy. Despite your best intentions, you fall for someone you know you shouldn't. You can't seem to kick him out. What's a girl to do?

Rosie's solution? Volunteer in Africa. What she learns about herself, teaches Oliver and how she utilises the 'star machine' is the ride that you, dear reader, will take.

Fielding's new book is witty, engaging and dead-on. She skewers celebrity, and holds up a mirror to show how ridiculous it all is. She uses the media, and former actual events (like the 1986 Ethiopian famine and Bob Geldof's 'Live Aid') to make the book real for her readers. As one of the characters says: "....We [in Africa] don't care about being famous, [we] just want to live...."

Fielding uses a similar writing style to 'Bridget Jones' in making Rosie talk directly to us, the readers. We don't feel like we're reading about someone else's life, but talking directly to her. Is Rosie insecure? Yup. Can she handle it? Read this great book, and find out for yourself.

Rating:
Summary: A Mature Bridget Jones
Review: The London sections are as funny and prone to mishaps as in "Bridget Jones Diary." Oliver and Rosie's relationship is true to life in a sad sort of way since it is based on a hot-and-cold power struggle. Rosie tries to fit with the "famous club" but isn't cut out.

In Africa she is needed. Well, actually, she thought about how much Africa would do her good, and then she found out how much good she could do for Africa. She is in charge and has friends. She even is falling for the new Medic. But impending doom from locusts may cause a famine and the only hope is a television plea to the public for aid. Every Cause must have a Celeb to succeed. So, off again to London to try to convince her Famous Club to help.

Rosie retains her new self esteem through all the hot-and-cold power plays of Oliver. Again, Bridget Jones but with a point other than finding the right guy. This was an excellent book with political and moral questions woven discreetly into the narrative.

Rating:
Summary: Bridget Jones gets serious--Kingsolveresque
Review: OK, it's perhaps not quite fair to describe this book in terms of Bridget Jones, since Fielding wrote it several years before Bridget Jones' Diary. But it's probably a safe bet that anybody reading it has already read Bridget Jones or seen the movie... and I would argue that in every respect-- form, elegance, sureness of itself-- Bridget Jones is a better book. The writing is that much more mature.

But, the two books are really in completely different genres. Where Bridget Jones' Diary practically defined a whole new chick-lit, the literary equivalent of Sex and the City (the columns by Candace Bushnell of that name are halfway between journalism and fiction, so I'd say Fielding really broke the ground that would soon be followed by Confessions of a Shopaholic, etc), Cause Celeb is closer to a kind of female coming-of-age Holden Caulfield lite than it is to comedy of manners.

True, many of the chapters do send up the culture of celebrity, and they are well handled. But Rosie Richardson's transformation from Bridget-like young-woman-in-publishing-involved-with-selfish-man to a relief worker is real, and very serious. Not only does she leave for Africa with no regrets, she becomes a very competent head of the program, and stays for four years.

MOST of the book takes place in the fictional country of Nambula, hovering on the edge of a famine and crisis. Fielding's attention to detail is wonderful, and she clearly knows what she writes about. It reminded me a lot of Barbara Kingsolver and her young heroines in Africa in Poisonwood Bible. When we finally get to the plot to have Rosie's old pals come and do a benefit the book becomes more interesting, but never really soars into the broad, hilarious satire it's described as being. This is Evelyn Waugh territory, but sentimental where Waugh is cutting, sad where Waugh would be cynical... so that it hovers uncertainly between Kingsolver-like punch and later-Fielding like panache.

For me, the more interesting chapters were the flashbacks to London, and the horrible people Fielding gleefully lances. And this was most effectively handled before Rosie grew a conscience and suddenly fell out of love with her newscaster boyfriend and with the shallow life. That is where Rosie's character is most vivid, and where Fielding's writing really shines. When she goes back to London to round up the celebrities, the cynical portratis are funny-- but teeter on self-righteoous. It's easier to like Rosie when she doesn't tell us what to think of the celebrities or of herself. There are some great characters in Africa too, but the love interest there is underplayed.

Reading this has me more impressed with Fielding's range than I was, but very grateful she turned to the wonderful comedy she now writes. There, she's a unique, precious talent. Still, worth a read if you're interested in the life of a relief worker and in Africa!

Rating:
Summary: Finally a heroine I can respect
Review: I'm a huge fan of Helen Fielding and really loved the first Bridget book (not so much the second one). But, I have to say I loved Cause Celeb even more. Rosie is a heroine you can really get behind. The camp scenes are suprisingly moving and riveting. I had picked this book about a year ago but never got around to reading it until now. I'm sure glad I finally did.

Rating:
Summary: Television tribes
Review: We are in Africa, obviously, if we are talking about huts. In Africa decent rains might produce conditions for locusts. In Africa the group from the compound encounters hunger and refugee settlements. Rosie Richardson had a relationship with Oliver Marchant. Unfortunately Oliver was not very nice. At the start of the affair his assistant called her to set up a date. She was fed up with her job and had no bargaining power with Oliver. She went to a party with Oliver and threw up because the drinks were so strong. Perhaps Oliver Marchand and Africa were both versions of Rosie's masochism. Rosie became haunted by images of Africa. She sold all of her clothes to a place called Second Thoughts. She would give the proceeds to Oxfam. Rosie said they did not have to live in luxury and make token gestures. Rosie decided she wanted to go work in Africa. Oscar asked to marry her but no, she was off to Nambula, a fictitious place created by the author.

The camp was different at night, foreign and inaccessible. They had 110 arrivals and 5 deaths in one day. People were coming because of the locusts. Next there were 440 arrivals and 19 deaths. The aid workers traveled from Nambula to Kefti to meet the stream of people. They saw locusts decimate fields of crops, meaning--nothing would be available for at least six months. The workers showed photographs of the situation in Kefti to UN officials. Rosie determined to return to London to get the story into the press and to get some celebrities to support the cause. She finds it hard going since for the last four years she had been working in Africa in a refugee camp. Now there was the crisis of the famine but her contacts through Oliver had withered. She runs into Oliver and feels humiliated. He chides her that she is going about things the wrong way. With a great deal of to-ing and fro-ing a television spot is arranged. When Rosie returns to Africa with Oliver and some of the other celebrities she learns that the compound had received help in her absence. The team goes out to seek the people fleeing the locusts. They did find some starving masses. They surmount the problem of positioning to make a television feed. Oliver falls in the rough terrain and one of the African men substitutes for him. He says that year after year the grain mountains and the colossal budgets in the developed countries fail to reach the starving people on time. A friend of the announcer is shown dying. After the broadcst the population at the refugee camp doubles and a lot of journalists visit. Food is received from the celebrity goup, Charitable Acts.

Rating:
Summary: Not Quite Cause for Celebration ~
Review: Helen Fielding does a great job of recreating the harsh and beautiful backdrop of Africa, while exciting that little place in all of us that once secretly wanted to join the Peace Corps.
I think the one downfall in the story is that Rosie (our tale's heroine), leaves us wanting more substance.
The book starts out great, introducing Rosie as the once-neglected girlfriend of a TV star, who now runs a refugee camp in Nambula, Africa.
You identify with her longing and neediness, and with the strength we all have to summon sooner or later to become whole again.
The problem is that we are kept in-plot just enough to want to finish the story, but not enough to really care about our characters.
There is a "Bridget"-similar love triangle between the new beau who is stable and stoic and the ex-love who is passionate and dreamy, but it isn't gripping or nail biting, just another twist to the story.
The story comes to a head as Rosie jeapordizes her job to recruit various stars from the UK for a televised fundraiser. It very quickly goes from 1st to 5th gear as we watch these stars try to deal with the 3rd-world conditions in Nambula. Fielding does a brilliant job of showing their shallowness, but without empathy and the humor tends to border on silly.
I definitely recommend this book, but don't expect the quirkiness of B.J. This is a wholly different novel.