Destiny, she’d learned, was written in the heavens; a person couldn’t take what the universe didn’t wish to give.I recently had a six hour flight and, at over 400 pages, Mrs. Kimble fit the time nicely: it was an interesting enough read to fill the hours, with nothing deep or difficult about it to tax the brain. When I got to my hotel, I discreetly abandoned the book in the lobby – hoping someone else might benefit from an interesting enough read to fill some hours, neither deep nor difficult – because while it wasn't a bad book at all, it's not like I needed to keep it for my own collection. That may be all you need to know about this book, spoilers to follow.
We begin by meeting the recently abandoned Birdie; a woman who married the charismatic older choir director at her Christian college after he seduced her. After two children and having everything that she thought she ever wanted – a husband, a home, a respected place in the community – Birdie is shocked and devastated when her husband – the now Reverend Ken Kimble – runs off with an 18-year-old co-ed. There was something unnerving about this section as Birdie takes to drinking wine and neglecting her children, hoping Ken will return before the neighbours notice he's gone, the woman having no identity if she's no longer the Reverend's wife.
Skip to Joan; an independent journalist with a recent large inheritance who never regretted not settling down until a recent fight with breast cancer and a disfiguring mastectomy; who would want her now? When Ken Kimble and the co-ed show up, Joan can't help falling for his animal magnetism, and despite warnings from her friends and brother, she becomes the second Mrs. Kimble (in a nicely manipulative trick, Ken declines to mention that he and his father were both Christian ministers, instead declaring his mother was Jewish and acting surprised that this meant he was also technically Jewish and could marry Joan in the temple). Ken becomes a partner in Joan's uncle's real estate company, and despite failing to conceive the child that would have made her feel fulfilled, and despite suspicions that Ken was cheating on her, Joan leaves everything to Ken when she loses her second fight with cancer.
Jump ahead ten years and meet Dinah: a successful sous chef in a gourmet restaurant who believes she will never marry because of the strawberry birthmark that covers half of her face. When Ken knocks Dinah down in the street with his car and forces her into a long rehab that causes her to lose her job, the now fabulously wealthy real estate developer not only offers to cover all of Dinah's hospital bills and living expenses, he even hooks her up with a plastic surgeon who removes the birthmark; allowing the new and improved Dinah to become the third Mrs. Kimble. This is not a happy union as Ken spends all of his time working (and perhaps stepping out), and Dinah and their moody son, Brandon, rattle around in the big house that, like the gorgeous Dinah herself, is all for show. When Dinah impulsively decides to invite the two adult children from Ken's first marriage to a Thanksgiving dinner, Ken pays all of his attention to his son's girlfriend; exposing him as a cold-hearted womaniser to the end.
As Mrs. Kimble covers the years 1961 – 1995, it does a good job of capturing the rapidly shifting eras and the evolving attitudes towards women and their own views of marriage. However, I don't know if author Jennifer Haigh did a good enough job of explaining just why women (of increasing independence and accomplishment) would continually throw themselves at Ken Kimble (other than repeatedly stating that they couldn't help themselves), and especially because Haigh made it an oft repeated character trait that Ken was a pig at the table; his humble roots always breaking through his carefully groomed facade in a spray of flying food (this was shown so often and was such an overt signal to the reader that I found it a clumsy and heavy-handed motif). From the philandering to the gold-digging to the insistence on physical perfection (Ken traded in Birdie on a younger model, he never made love to Joan without her keeping her top on, he paid to have Dinah's birthmark removed and personally bought all of her slinky dresses for public events), I never found Ken Kimble to be attractive, and as we don't get the story from his own point-of-view, I never knew what motivated him, either. In response to those readers who might find Ken to be more monster than man, Haigh says in the end notes:
I never thought of him as a sociopath. He is in many ways a very ordinary person. He simply takes what is given to him.Okie dokie. In the final analysis, Mrs. Kimble has an interesting plot – and especially as it shows the social evolution of its period – but it didn't feel like it was populated with real people. Fine for a long flight; no regrets ditching it in a lobby.
