“So, right. He’d be an un-American President, anyway, too much compassion for the retarded and the lame. His mother called him “baby boy” or “Teddy beary.” “Shut up, Ma!” he never said, though he was beginning to suspect that he should. A legitimate red-blooded sixteen-year-old boy needed a grievance. Where was his pride? Where! But he never got around to it, and anyhow his mom loved him so much.”

 

You’re an adolescent, your mom loves you and your world seems perfectly fine – great. But there’s obviously more at play in the case of Sid Baumwell, the protagonist of All You Have to Do. The inner turmoil is building up, and his yet unexplored desires are desperate to leave their mark on the world. Sid is waiting for high school to end and for him to leave his ho-hum town, which “feels like tomorrow won’t come fast enough. Like today’s some lazy bum with his feet on the coffee table, no intention of going anywhere ever at all.” That’s when Sid meets Bill Baxter, a man “from away”, and they have the most beautiful encounters which show that the imagined also occupies a space and shapes our self as much as the real does[1].

 

Sarah Braunstein magnificently explores the human psyche of both adolescents and adults in this short story. A feat she effortlessly repeats in her debut novel The Sweet Relief of Missing Children. Sarah is represented by The Clegg Agency in New York and the Anna Jarota Agency in Paris. This translation was published with their kind consent and cooperation.

[1] From the interview with Sarah Braunstein in The New Yorker, March 9 2015