Cause Celeb - Softcover

Fielding, Helen

3.04

6,691 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0142000221 ISBN 13: 9780142000229

Publisher: Penguin, 2001

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Disillusioned with life as a literary publicist in London and sick of her hotshot TV presenter boyfriend, twenty-something Rosie Richardson decides to give up glitz for good deeds and escape to Africa to run a refugee camp. When famine strikes and a massive refugee influx threatens to overwhelm the camp, officials drag their heels. The only way to get food fast is to bring the celebrities first, so Rosie returns to London to organize a star-studded and risky emergency appeal. Deftly skewering the world of celebrity fundraising, Fielding's debut novel is both comic and thought-provoking. Cause Celeb crackles with insights into the nature of fame, passion, and altruism in our time, all the while following an unlikely-but hugely likeable-heroine.

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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

Review:

"A terrific, witty story." --USA Today

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