Subject: "Over a span of twenty five years, three women marry the same man - a charismatic named Ken Kimble. Each Mrs Kimble tells her own story, offering a mesmerising look at how three very different women became accomplices in their own deception."-- BOOK JACKET
In her masterful first novel, Haigh delivers the compelling story of three women who marry the same man--an enigmatic opportunist name Ken Kimble.
"Over a span of twenty five years, three women marry the same man - a charismatic named Ken Kimble. Each Mrs Kimble tells her own story, offering a mesmerising look at how three very different women became accomplices in their own deception."-- BOOK JACKET
The title of this first novel refers to three women, each of whom marries an opportunist named Ken Kimble. The first wife, Birdie, is Ken's student at a small Christian college. With her, he has two children. Then he seduces another student and deserts his family, leaving Birdie to bring up the children alone. The second Mrs. Kimble is a successful career woman, reassessing her priorities in the wake of her mastectomy. Ken capitalizes on Joan's neediness and sweeps her off her feet. He also ingratiates himself with her uncle, a real estate tycoon. When Joan and Uncle Floyd die, Ken inherits from both. The third Mrs. Kimble had been the first Mrs. Kimble's babysitter. A chance meeting reunites Ken and Dinah: during their marriage, Ken sets up a real estate scam, purporting to make housing available to the deserving poor, and later disappears when his scheme is uncovered. Haigh creates characters ranging from wicked to wonderful, from warm to wily. Her prose is beautifully crafted to highlight life's contrasts. Original and compelling, this debut is recommended for most collections.-Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Providence (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Book Review
Haigh's perhaps too-carefully orchestrated debut tells the elusive story of one man from the perspectives of the three women he woos, marries, and disappoints. In 1969, Ken Kimble, chaplain at a Virginia college, deserts his wife Birdie and their two small children. Birdie, a southern magnolia without the steel who'd dropped out of Bible college to marry Ken seven years earlier, is unable to cope and slips into alcoholism. Meanwhile, after a stint of hippie-style wandering, Ken ends up in Florida, where he takes up with Joan. Having recently undergone a mastectomy, the 39-year-old career-driven Jewish journalist from New York feels newly vulnerable and lonely. She never questions the vague nature of Ken's past or his claim to have a Jewish mother. After their marriage, Ken enters the real-estate business under the patronage of Joan's uncle, while Joan tries to have a baby despite her doctor's warning that pregnancy could spur a recurrence of cancer. She suffers a miscarriage, then blames herself for a disastrous visit from Ken's children during which workaholic Ken shows minimal interest in them. Soon Ken finds himself a widower. In 1979, now a real-estate tycoon in Washington, D.C., Ken rediscovers Dinah, his children's babysitter back in his Virginia days. An aspiring chef, Dinah, whose sense of self has been marred by facial disfigurement since birth, remembers a moment of genuine kindness she received from Ken during her painful adolescence. After he pays for an operation to remove her birthmark, the much younger Dinah becomes his suddenly beautiful third wife. Fifteen years later, they have a troubled adolescent son and a loveless marriage. But Dinah is stronger than Ken's previous two wives. She not only survives and prospers after his final disappearing act, but provides solace for all three of his troubled children. The measured prose and care for detail show a promising talent, but the overscripted characters' lives feel more literary than lived.