As the novel opens, rumors begin to reach the camp about the impending arrival of thousands of new starving refugees, and, after other attempts to secure aid fail, Rosie decides to go back to London and enlist celebrities in a fund-raising program televised from Africa. Marchand agrees to help her, though not without exasperating demands, and eventually he arranges a broadcast that will originate in London with cut-in portions broadcast live by satellite from Africa. Though donations flood in, there is no artificially upbeat ending. Scores of the Africans die of starvation, and relief efforts begin to suffer from the short attention span or compassion fatigue of the British audience. Yet, the novel brings its various strands to satisfactory conclusions: Rosie frees herself from the allure of Oliver, finds a better man, and demonstrates how her time in Africa has made her a deeper and more serious person than the shallow media celebrities whose narcissism and other foibles the novel relentlessly and inventively satirizes.
Cause Celeb is an impressive first novel. Writing for The Independent (13 August 1994), Harriet Paterson praised its satire as "sharp, gutsy, and refreshing" and said that "Fielding confidently treads the sticky path of exercising her wit on those who deserve it without being flip about those who don't"; and Maggie Traugott in The Independent on Sunday (31 July 1994) saw that "juxtaposing the haves of London with the have-nots of Africa without pontificating or pathos is one of the things Helen Fielding pulls off so dextrously in this debut novel." Though the novel is funny, Fielding may well have been most interested in the sympathetic treatment of important issues.
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