When Tough Decisions are on the Menu - Helen FitzGerald & Herman Koch, 24 August 2012

Genomics Forum blogging team at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2012
Blog by Hazel McHaffie

How much responsibility should parents take for their children? And how far would you be prepared to go for those you love? When is it right to sacrifice the good of an individual for a greater good of the many? These are important questions for individuals and for society. And questions that hold a particular appeal for me right now since I'm exploring them in my current novel about organ donation and child protection. So I went along to the Spiegeltent with high hopes early on Friday morning.

But the first question that struck me once I arrived was why were so few people interested in these questions/authors? The ambience in the Spiegeltent is friendly and relaxed, coffees on tap, but only a tiny group of people attended. Was it simply too early in the morning? Or do readers not want to address such hard issues? Are there implications here for novelists like me?

The chairman, agent Jenny Brown, set a light tone to what could have been a difficult event with a quip about the similarity of the titles: The Dinner and The Donor, which led nicely into a question about the use of comedy in both books. It came naturally to both authors. Though Australian Helen Fitzgerald was formerly a criminal justice social worker, working with rapists, murderers and psychopaths, she is herself one of thirteen children. She therefore grew up with humour part of her normal currency, a reality which she took into her professional life too. Indeed, she misses the rich source of material provided by her work with criminals, now that she has become a full time novelist. Humour in his writing came easily to Dutch TV and radio producer, actor and writer Herman Koch, too, because his TV work involved comedy.