Rating: 
Summary: A reader from Olympia
Review: Mrs. Kimble is a compelling readable novel about a chameleon of a man who seduces and marries three very different women. Although this was an enjoyable read, I felt the characters lacked depth. Ken Kimble's motivation for being so smarmy is never explained or understood. More troubling than that was how easily he seemed to charm these women. I found his second wife's sudden conversion from investigative reporter to smitten wife who only scratched the surface of her husbands dearth of history especially unbelievable. Surely breast cancer isn't an excuse for loosing all insight. Still a very pleasant read that will make beer bellied honest husbands everywhere look good.
Rating: 
Summary: Original Ideas, Intriguing Characters
Review: Mrs. Kimble is full of intrigue and originality. We are able to witness the same man, a man who is best described as uncommon, through the eyes of each of his three wives. Collectively, they make up most of his adult life. Each of the women are complex within themselves and their situations and hopefulness ignite compassion in the reader throughout. I agree that some of the circumstances were a little too unbelievable in the real world. Sometimes, it is very hard to believe why the characters seem to do what they do, and Jennifer Haigh never really seems to explain why either. Nonetheless, it is an interesting read if you have already read the phenomenal books of today. You might want to first spend your money on a book called Lucky Monkeys In The Sky by a fairly unknown author named Michele Geraldi. I tell everyone that it is the best novel I have read in at least a decade, and I still don't seem to hear much about it. Believe me, it is a very very compelling novel. When you are done with that novel (probably after reading it ten times like I did) then I would move on to novels like Mrs. Kimble. It is a good book to resort to, but not really a book that will change you.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing despite flaws
Review: I read this novel in one day....just couldn't put it down.When I'd finished it, I realized that though I enjoyed it very much, the novel was full of holes. Parts of the plot didn't hold up too well, and the reasons Mr. Kimble was such a cipher was never explained at all. Also, if he was so shallow, so indifferent to the needs of others, how did he attract someone as savvy and intelligent as his second wife Joan?
We know little about him except that he could be all things to all women for as long as it suited his fancy. He was the ultimate smarmy opportunist but I never bought the parts of the book describing his closets, drawers and desk, utterly devoid of personal items of any sort. However dramatic the description, everyone keeps at least one thing of personal value, even if it's only a sled named Rosebud.
The other characters caught my imagination and my sympathy. I knew the book truly engaged me when I found myself at the end, hoping for a happier life in the future for Jody and Charlie.
Rating:
Summary: Very fine first novel
Review: This is a book you can read and thoroughly enjoy in a day. It begins with the death of an unknown man in Florida and goes back in time to his history of marriages with three Mrs. Kimbles over a time span of thirty years. We see how well he can seduce and court these women, but he does not have it in him to carry out the relationships. He leaves the first one, a young woman named Birdie, with two young children. She cannot manage to live whithout him so she finds herself drinking wine to excess, totally unable to cope. These pages are particularly painful because we see the effect this has on her life and her two young children, Charles and Jody. We watch them grow up and meet the other wives, once as a product of Ken Kimble absconding with them to Florida to meet and live with wife number 2, Joan Kimble, who of course believes his lies. Dinah is wife number 3, who actually was the babysitter for Birdie's children. Dinah has a son, Benjamin, and much of the whole group minus, Mr Ken Kimble, of course, come together. This is done very nicely, and without feeling contrived. We never really know Ken Kimble, except as a seducer and cad, who only piles on the charm at the beginning of any relationship, especially when the women are young.
This is not a perfect novel, but it is really very good, worth reading, and of course you don't put it down without thinking about these characters for a bit when you are done.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful debut novel
Review: The story of the three wives of Mr. Kimble. Three very different women consecutively marry the same man. The stories of their marriages are told through their points of view - and the man they each married comes to be fleshed out through their very different wants and needs within a marriage.
Not perfect, but what a great start to what should be a stellar writing career.
Highly recommended - if just to say you read her first book way back when...
Rating:
Summary: The incredible tale of the quintessential creep
Review: "Mrs. Kimble" follows the life of serial husband Ken Kimble, but it's the stories of the women he ruins that this book tells about in tragic detail.1969 (Virginia): Birdie is an 18 year old girl who is captivated by Reverend Kimble, 13 years her senior. After he impregnates her, the two are married. But it isn't long before Ken's late night shennanigans come full circle when Birdie opens her front door to a teenager named Moira Snell that claims to be having an affair with Ken. The next thing she knows, Birdie is left high and dry with barely any money to stay alive and pay the bills- and she has 2 children to boot; Charlie, age 6 and Jody, age 4. Birdie's answer is to find solace in one bottle of wine after another, while Family Services continues to seek her out. Charlie and Jody grow up with an alcoholic Mother, who never quite gets over the shock of having her husband walk out on her. 1969 (Florida): Joan Cohen meets Ken Kimble through her friends, the Snells. Their daughter Moira brings him home from college, intorducing him as her fiancee. Joan can see Ken is distinctly older than Moira, even though he appears to be a hippee. When Joan's gardening services sends Ken over to spray her oleanders, she too falls under Kimble's spell. It doesn't help that she's already lost one breast to cancer, because she begins to melt under Kimble's complements and charm. Pretty soon, they're married. But it isn't long before things go sour... 1979 (Washington D.C.): Dinah Whitacre, who used to babysit for the Kimble's back in Virginia, has lived her whole life with a purple birthmark covering half her face ("It's in the shape of Minnesota", she tells us). Incredulously, Kimble shows up to dine at the restaurant that she is a chef at. At a traffic light weeks later, Dinah is struck by a car (Kimble's, of course)and her ankle is broken. She cannot work for months, and Kimble offers to let her move in with him, becoming her Knight in Shining Armor. He offers to pay for her to get laser surgery to correct her birthmark. Here, the book jumps to years later, after she and Ken are married with a teenage son and she's become his young armpiece (she's 39, he's 65). The holes in this story revolve around Kimble himself, because we never really get to know anything about him. Then again, that seems to be the central theme with each Mrs. Kimble: none of them really know anything about him when they marry him. From pretending to be Jewish with Joan, to stealing funds from HUD, each revelation is a mystery, but not really a surprise. Kimble's absence from their lives makes his sons see him for who he is, yet the women can't see the forest for the trees. "Maybe that's what it took to see through a fraud like Kimble", a 27 year old Charlie tells us, "maybe you had to be his son". Excellent first Novel by Jennifer Haigh. I eagerly await her next.
Rating:
Summary: Good debut
Review: This is a good debut novel. The concept is intriguing - a chameleon-like man who changes identities to match the women he marries, preys upon their weaknesses, and changes their lives. The portrays of the women were fascinating, well-drawn and sympathetic - I really rooted for Birdie in the beginning, hoping she would recover from Ken and move on, and then felt increasingly sad and frustrated when it became clear she would not recover. Joan, the second wife, became ill and never had the chance to recover, and finally Dinah, the third wife, made the triumphant recovery. The weakness of the book was Ken - why on earth were these women so lovestruck with a man who was a bad lover, no companion, had horrible table manners, uninteresting, a liar...Birdie I could understand, but Joan's obsession just didn't quite work, and Dinah's just seemed unbelievable - she was almost contemptuous of him throughout the marriage, but she stayed, and stayed, and stayed. And finally, I felt the ending was weak because it made him too one-dimensionally evil - even destroying his business success. He would have been more interesting had he been shown as more of a person and less of a caricature.
Rating:
Summary: A great debut novel!
Review: Mrs. Kimble is a very enjoyable read. My test of a good book is when I continue to think about the characters long after I have finished the book. I think Ken Kimble will definitely meet that criteria. I found the characters to be quite interesting and well developed, but it would have been interesting to have had a bit more insight into what made Ken Kimble tick. I look forward to reading more of Jennifer Haigh's books as she clearly has talent.
Rating:
Summary: The first time in a while I haven't been able to put a book
Review: down.
I just finished reading Mrs Kimble and have subsequently read the [...]review. I have to say I loved the novel. I think that it is not unfortunate that we don't know what made Ken Kimble such a jerk, as his mysteriousness is part of what makes him so interesting to his 3 wives and the holes he leaves in his story are what make his marriageability so believable. (Also, his wives were all women in transition, involved in their own storylines so it would make sense that they would not be too concerned in questioning the solace that he initially offers them.) Jennifer Haigh could go on to write a companion piece called Mr Kimble, but -- to be honest -- I think the one dimensionality of his character would not make him as interesting a character as Birdie, Joan, and Dinah. This one dimensionality is not a slur on the author's talent: rather a compliment. She has created a complex one dimensional character: a man who is driven by a certain lust (for attractive women, for easy money) and who is afraid/ unable to ask too much of life once that lust has been satisfied.
My one gripe with the book is that I wish we had known more of Joan's ultimate fate. She had lived such an interesting life and carried on a thoughtful interior life. I felt she was done a slight injustice being left on the page as she finally was. I really look forward to Jennifer Haigh's next book.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Debut Novel
Review: I really enjoyed this debut novel by Jenneifer Haigh. The author tells the story of the three wives of Ken Kimble. Throughout the book, we learn to despise Ken Kimble and have sympathy for each of his wives and children. The only thing lacking from this novel are the reasons and mindset of Ken Kimble himself. What caused Ken Kimble to behave the ways he did and why did he destroy the lives of each of his wives and three children?
This is an excellent read and I would recommend this book to all.
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