Analysis: Helen Fielding; Cause Celeb

Analysis of Helen Fielding’s

Cause Celeb

By

Linda Eskengren

Introduktion and Aim

Cause Celeb was Helen Fielding’s first published novel, but most people know her as the author of Bridget Jones’s diary. Fielding main character is always a woman, who wants to be strong and self independent and have troubles with her love life. This book tells the story about Rosie Richardson who leaves her fast-track job in London to do good in the refugee camps in Africa. After four years, when the locusts and starvation gets to bad she returns to London and her sophisticated social circles that she hates. She persuade the celebrities come to Africa to raise money for the starving people. This becomes the "Cause Celeb" of the title.

My aim with this analysis is to try and understand why Helen Fielding has written this novel? And if there is a message and if so what?

Analysis

Characters

The main character in the novel is Rosie Richardson who is a publicist at a London publishing house. She describes herself as a literary puffette whose main job seems to be to attend parties looking appropriately pretty. At one such event she meets Oliver Merchant, a hotshot television personality who appears to be a drunken cross between Charlie Rose and Warren Beatty. It is never sufficiently clear why Rosie is so drawn to Oliver. He treats her hideously and he lets his assistant call her to make and break of their dates. They have a stormy on and off relationship through the book.

Most of the characters who we meet in London are celebrities that circles around Rosie’s and Oliver’s relationship. These people only cares about their fame and fortune. The characters we meet in Africa are aid workers, they try in the best way they can to help the starving and suffering refugees. In the end of the novel we meet Dr. O’Rourke who is the answer to Rosie’s dreams.

Settings

There are two main settings in this book one of them takes place in London. This is were we first meet Rosie and get a glimpse of her hectic lifestyle. It is because her life in London she decides to go to Nambula in Africa. There are big differences in the settings London is grey, cold and superficial. Africa is dry, hot, dusty and welcoming. Even though Africa is a hard land to live in, England is much more difficult, it is the this we take for granted that makes life there hard.

Time

This book can be a bit confusing in the beginning, because the story starts four years ahead of time in Africa. Then the next chapter goes back four years in time when Rosie still lives in London. The chapters in the book jumps around until they in the end close up together. I have never read a book who is written like this before. But I think this makes the book even more interesting to read because it is hard to guess what is going to happen in the next chapter.

A strong episode

In this part of the story Rosie is in Africa and everything is just as bad as it can get in the refugee camp. The food and medicine shipment are late, Rosie cannot

get any answers one when it will arrive. They really need food in the camp now when the locusts are ravaging. And they need to show the Un how bad it is but that means that someone have to go to Kefti and check it out. But the problem was that the only ones how could take them there was soldiers form the Keftian People’s Liberation Front, who were not aloud to go there. And another problem was the road to the boarder was used to be full of mines there might be some left and they had to watch out for air-raids