Child narrators in adult fiction

with Elizabeth Baines and Charles Lambert

Introduction

Writing from a child's point-of-view isn't easy. Done well though, it can be effective and affecting, so it's worth a try. Most stories of this type use a third-person-priviledged point-of-view, though a first-person treatment is possible. Some people (me included) rarely produce child-centred stories, which is odd - after all, we were all children once. Two story collections I've read in the last year or so have a fair proportion of child-centred stories, so I thought I'd bring the authors' views into the discussion.
Some writers raid their own pasts

• "The key, I think is memory: quite simply, remembering, never forgetting what it was like to be a child - ... when I was in my early twenties I made a conscious vow ... never to forget what it was like to be a child ... But I do also happen to have a very good memory: ... 'Leaf Memory' is based on a real-life memory of my own, aged two years and two months" - Elizabeth Baines
  

My memory's nowhere near that good. I'm a parent, which you'd have thought should be useful in this context, but childlessness may have advantages. Parents have less time to write, but that's not all - in "The Psychologist" March 2009 they reported on a survey that found that parents are no happier than childless couples. In fact, once the children leave home, parents are sadder. One begins to wonder what the point of children is.

• "having no children myself means that I've never fully grown up. I'm at the age where many of my friends are wondering why hostile, sulky delinquents from outer space have occupied their teenage children's bodies. And what do I do? Easy, I side with the kids. ... Basically, I can't grasp the crisis from the parent's viewpoint, however hard I try." - Charles Lambert

Writing's hard enough as it is without burdening oneself with extra handicaps, so why should authors restrict themselves to a child's viewpoint and vocabulary? It's fair enough in children's fiction but what about fiction for adults? Let's look at each restriction in isolation

• Viewpoint - Though children might not understand what's
  going on, and might be unable to be involved in the scene, they have
  certain advantages as observers - like cameras, they might see things
  from a new angle and
  might be ignored by the protagonists. The child might not understand
  what's going on, but readers are likely to. The difference between
  the character's and the reader's understanding can be
  exploited for laughs or for more serious effect.
  On the BBC's web-site they give
  the example of this - a child bursting into his parents' bedroom, upset to find
  them wrestling naked on the bed. Successful writers consciously exploit this
  irony
  
  
  
  • 
    "children can have instinctual knowledge which we adults can lose, and these insights yet gaps can be the stuff of dramatic conflict and motor a story" - Elizabeth Baines
    
  
  
  • 
    "one of the things I'm doing when I choose to use children as the channel through which the narrative is seen is what Henry James did with Maisie; I'm exploiting their clear-sightedness and innocence. Children see everything, but don't necessarily understand any of it. Whether they're protagonists or witnesses, they tend to be one step behind - or to one side of - the attentive adult reader, which sets up an interesting narrative gap through which the unsettling elements can squeeze." - Charles Lambert
    
  
  
  
  A way round both of these limitations is to use a fluid 3rd-person priviledged point-of-view, rather as in the Joyce example below.
  



• Language - Children may not have a wide, intellectual
  vocabulary, but that needn't be such a restriction. They can be original
  in their use of words, less restricted by convention and social mores.

Examples

• Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artists as a young man" - `When you wet the bed, first it is warm then it
  gets cold. His mother put on the oilsheet. That had the queer
  smell. His mother had a nicer smell than his father.' (not
  quite
  first person, but the book's language grows as the boy does)


• Hugo Hamilton's "The Speckled People" - people have said "The world here is viewed through the eyes of a child who does not judge, merely details and describes." .... "Though Hugo matures as the story unfolds, the simple, declarative sentences of a child's confused and partial understanding do not. (...) He has made an attempt on something impossible - to show from a child's point of view what a child can't see. To the degree that he succeeds, it's remarkable."


• Paula Sharp's "Crows over a Wheatfield" - people have said that "the characters are so involving - not since 'To Kill a Mockingbird' or the opening chapters of 'Jane Eyre' has there been a more acute and astute child's view of the world".



• Sue Townsend's "The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4". Comedy.


• Colum McCann's "Everything in this country must" - this
  collection's stories have 1st person narrators in their early teens.


• Roddy Doyle's "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" - has a 10 year old 1st person narrator


• Daisy Ashford's The Young
  Visiters was written for adults by a 9 year old


• Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" - has a 6 year old narrator.


• Emma Donoghue's "The Room" - has a 5 year old narrator.


• Jessica Bell’s "The Book" - has a 5 year old narrator. See Jim Murdoch's blog for details.


• "The Life of Pi"? "The Tin Drum"? "Empire of the Sun"?

Problems

• It's very tempting to slip out of character for a few paragraphs.
  A commonly used way to include an adult's viewpoint is for the child to be an uncomprehending messenger - e.g. to have the child find an adult's diary and read it (Paula Sharp calls that a hackneyed device though!). Here's Elizabeth Baines' approach
  
  
  
  • "The story 'Power' ... strictly, use[s] a child narrator, ie, the voice is that of the child as a child, and in this case in the present tense, as the story is happening. This is the most restrictive way of adopting a child's viewpoint, with least chance for authorial intervention. The main way I get round the restriction here is to splice the child's narrative with the mother's phone calls on which the child eavesdrops."
  
  
  • "In 'Star Things' ... the child is constantly and innocently quoting things her parents have said"
  
  
  
  She notes however that "the children's voices in these stories aren't entirely
  naturalistic, I do take linguistic licence, as they're not intended as
  straightforward dramatic monologues"
  


• Even the best adult books with child narrators
  risk being treated as if they're children's books


• It can be difficult to convince the reader of the narrator's age.
  Authors often seem to have over- or under-estimated the
  child, but kids have an irritating habit of not acting their age -
  one
  moment they talk like an adult, next moment they sulk like a baby.


• One has to be rather careful about using material that can be traced back
  to a particular child - moreso than with consenting adults.

Special Needs

Authors have tried combining age limitations with other features.
In a sense, these writers are having it both ways; they can exploit the freedom and freshness of the child narrator without having to make too many compromises in vocabulary or intellect.

• "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time" (Mark
  Haddon) has a clever,
  autistic 15-year-old narrator


• "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" (Jonathan Safran Foer)
  is held together by Oskar, a precocious and obsessive nine-year-old
  polymath


• "How the Light Gets In" (M.J. Hyland) has a highly intelligent,
  damaged 16-year-old


• "Flowers for Algernon" (Daniel Keyes) doesn't have a child
  narrator, but the IQ and language of the narrator change in the
  course
  of the novel.

Authors quoted

The quotes are used (with the authors' permission) from Virtual Booktours that they made - Elizabeth Baines' "Around the Edges of the World" Tour and Charles Lambert's "Something Rich and Strange" Tour

• Elizabeth Baines won 3rd prize in the Raymond Carver Short Story Competition 2008. Her book, "Balancing on the Edge of the World" (Salt) was shortlisted for the 2008 The Salt Frank O'Connor Prize.


• Charles Lambert was an O.Henry Prize winner in 2007, along with William
  Trevor and Alice Munro. Books include "Little Monsters" (Picador) and "The
  Scent of Cinnamon" (Salt)

Discussion Points

• Are child-narrator stories usually autobiographical?


• What other devices do authors use to bring an adult perspective into child-narrator stories?


• What 1st person child narrator novels/stories have you read? Did they work?


• Try writing a 1st person child narrator story!