It's taking me time to decide where and how to start my new novel.

Is it all about childhood (my reactions to my parent's marriage and divorce), or is there some events and reflections in the present?

I need some sort of device to make it work.

At first I was sold on the idea of writing it from the point of view of the Imaginary Friend - but I'm now to sure I can pull that off.  On the other hand - 70,000 words from the point of view of a child aged 3-10 - with his limited vocabulary, grammar, perceptions would hard, too.

Last week - at my editor's suggestion, I read Michael Frayn's Spies, which is mostly seen through the eyes of a boy of about 11 in a suburban village like the one I grew up in, but ten years earlier.

It's a terrific book.  Frayn frames it by having the character, as an old man, return to the village in the present day.  It works well - in fact I can't see a way of using that device any better, or even differently.

So I'm stuck at the moment - with my full of ideas, and hoping to find a breakthrough.  Meanwhile I've begun Iain Banks' The Crow Road, which is great, long - and inculdes childhoods and present day interwoven.  Raelly I'd like to approach the subject in this sort of way - but how?  How?

Suggestions welcome