Adult Vs. Child Voice in Frame Narrative

The Evolving Voice: When there's a frame, how do we lose the adult to achieve the child?

I like a frame structure of narration for the same reason I like any type of hints or foreshadowing: it offers a clue about the future and allows the reader's imagination to run wild, usually along the lines of: "How on earth do we get to this point?" I'm a firm believer in the cooperative effort between author and reader, and any narrative tactic that prods the reader to put their imagination to work is a great one by me. That's exactly what Walls does in the first chapter; she gives us the "ending", the conclusion of a childhood relationship as it has developed between parent and child, and establishes a gnawing question moving forward (or backward): What happens between a parent and child to put them so far apart? (It's like a topic sentence in a paragraph, guiding what comes next and keeping the reader focused.)

From this point on, however, the author has their work cut out for them. Once established, that adult voice must disappear, else the reader will never truly get lost in the way-back-when they bring us back to. I would not have been able to get so utterly caught up in the Walls family fever dream if the first person voice, my tour guide, wasn't 100% committed. I mentioned this in last week's post, so it may be some repetition, but when Walls' narration is at a point when she is four years old, she is four years old; she believes, she parrots, she springs and bounces back. When Walls takes us to a time when she's nine years old, she is nine years old; she sponges, she explores, she asks questions and learns lessons. There's no deviation. That's true commitment.

I have to wonder how an author can pull this off - not just in writing, as we will all dissect, hash and rehash, for very good reason - but in remembering, as well, which seems to be the obscured first process in writing a memoir. I know that when I write from memory, the voice I use stays pretty much the same: the adult looking back. This can be explained by my spotty memory and my difficulty in putting myself back, totally present, in that past time. Does Walls' narrative voice sock right into her former brain because her memory is so clear? Or is this achievement one that takes a good amount of practice, a narrative effort of constructing a convincing voice that borrows from writing fiction? Imagination shoring in the gaps that memory leaves behind may seem like fabrication to a purist, but when you really think about it, this is an excellent thing for a memoirist and a fiction writer to have in common: complete absorption in, and vivid communication of, a world that does not physically, literally exist in the here/now. I'm fascinated by all tactical aspects of writing, and I have to admit it pleases me to imagine some strategy on Walls' part in constructing her child voice, rather than simply relying on and parroting a freakishly strong memory.