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Sara was Olive’s mother, though by the time the novel begins, she has been dead for many years. Sara’s early relationship with Stephen Turner forms the core of Olive’s first story to Lucy, as she reflects that despite marrying other people, both Sara and Stephen never forgot each other—to the point that that they existed for each other as “ghosts” in their later relationships. Olive has complicated feelings about her mother, blaming Sara (unfairly, Lucy thinks) for her father’s suicide.
Sara Quotes in Tell Me Everything
The Tell Me Everything quotes below are all either spoken by Sara or refer to Sara . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 1, Chapter 1 Quotes
[Lucy] shook her head and said, “Jesus Christ. All these unrecorded lives, and people just live them.” Then she looked at Olive and said, “Sorry for swearing.”
“Phooey, swear all you want.” Olive added, “Well, that’s the story. I always wanted to tell someone. But for whatever reasons I never did.”
Lucy said, contemplatively, “I wonder how many people in long marriages live with ghosts beside them.”
Related Characters:
Lucy Barton (speaker), Olive Kitteridge (speaker), Bob Burgess, Sara , Stephen Turner
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
21
Explanation and Analysis:
Shortly after Lucy meets Olive Kitteridge for the first time, Olive tells Lucy the story of her mother Sara, who pined after her first love Stephen Turner even decades into her marriage with Olive’s father. Lucy’s reaction to Olive’s story (“Jesus Christ”) suggests the disappointment that seems to have pervaded Sara’s life. Specifically, Lucy knows that while Sara’s love for Stephen might seem romantic in Olive’s retelling, Sara experienced her own heartbreak as “unrecorded,” not as something to mythologize but as something to “live” day in and day out. Firstly, then, this exchange is notable because it gets at the power of narrative to “record” life. In finally sharing the story with Lucy (“I always wanted to tell someone but never did,” Olive confesses), Olive gives new shape and permanence to her mother’s life.
Secondly, the story of Sara and Stephen Turner introduces the idea of marriages lived “with ghosts beside them”—meaning, literally, that past lovers or imagined love affairs can haunt present unions. Over and over again, the marriages in the novel will indeed be plagued by “ghost[ly]” desires, including for Lucy herself (who finds herself falling for her beloved friend Bob Burgess). But importantly, in providing this metaphor so early on, the novel suggests that such adulterous desires do not need to be acted on for their presence to be felt in a marriage. Instead, these “ghosts” can show up in more subtle ways, living “beside” marriages even as the marriages themselves continue.
Get the entire Tell Me Everything LitChart as a printable PDF.
Sara Quotes in Tell Me Everything
The Tell Me Everything quotes below are all either spoken by Sara or refer to Sara . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Book 1, Chapter 1 Quotes
[Lucy] shook her head and said, “Jesus Christ. All these unrecorded lives, and people just live them.” Then she looked at Olive and said, “Sorry for swearing.”
“Phooey, swear all you want.” Olive added, “Well, that’s the story. I always wanted to tell someone. But for whatever reasons I never did.”
Lucy said, contemplatively, “I wonder how many people in long marriages live with ghosts beside them.”
Related Characters:
Lucy Barton (speaker), Olive Kitteridge (speaker), Bob Burgess, Sara , Stephen Turner
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
21
Explanation and Analysis:
Shortly after Lucy meets Olive Kitteridge for the first time, Olive tells Lucy the story of her mother Sara, who pined after her first love Stephen Turner even decades into her marriage with Olive’s father. Lucy’s reaction to Olive’s story (“Jesus Christ”) suggests the disappointment that seems to have pervaded Sara’s life. Specifically, Lucy knows that while Sara’s love for Stephen might seem romantic in Olive’s retelling, Sara experienced her own heartbreak as “unrecorded,” not as something to mythologize but as something to “live” day in and day out. Firstly, then, this exchange is notable because it gets at the power of narrative to “record” life. In finally sharing the story with Lucy (“I always wanted to tell someone but never did,” Olive confesses), Olive gives new shape and permanence to her mother’s life.
Secondly, the story of Sara and Stephen Turner introduces the idea of marriages lived “with ghosts beside them”—meaning, literally, that past lovers or imagined love affairs can haunt present unions. Over and over again, the marriages in the novel will indeed be plagued by “ghost[ly]” desires, including for Lucy herself (who finds herself falling for her beloved friend Bob Burgess). But importantly, in providing this metaphor so early on, the novel suggests that such adulterous desires do not need to be acted on for their presence to be felt in a marriage. Instead, these “ghosts” can show up in more subtle ways, living “beside” marriages even as the marriages themselves continue.
