NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Two sensational unsolved crimes—one in the past, another in the present—are linked by one man’s memory and self-deception in this chilling novel of literary suspense from National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon.Includes an exclusive conversation between Dan Chaon and Lynda BarryNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Wall Street Journal • NPR • The New York Times • Los … Wall Street Journal • NPR • The New York Times • Los Angeles Times • The Washington Post • Kirkus Reviews • Publishers Weekly
“We are always telling a story to ourselves, about ourselves.” This is one of the little mantras Dustin Tillman likes to share with his patients, and it’s meant to be reassuring. But what if that story is a lie?
A psychologist in suburban Cleveland, Dustin is drifting through his forties when he hears the news: His adopted brother, Rusty, is being released from prison. Thirty years ago, Rusty received a life sentence for the massacre of Dustin’s parents, aunt, and uncle. The trial came to epitomize the 1980s hysteria over Satanic cults; despite the lack of physical evidence, the jury believed the outlandish accusations Dustin and his cousin made against Rusty. Now, after DNA analysis has overturned the conviction, Dustin braces for a reckoning.
Meanwhile, one of Dustin’s patients has been plying him with stories of the drowning deaths of a string of drunk college boys. At first Dustin dismisses his patient’s suggestions that a serial killer is at work as paranoid thinking, but as the two embark on an amateur investigation, Dustin starts to believe that there’s more to the deaths than coincidence. Soon he becomes obsessed, crossing all professional boundaries—and putting his own family in harm’s way.
From one of today’s most renowned practitioners of literary suspense, Ill Will is an intimate thriller about the failures of memory and the perils of self-deception. In Dan Chaon’s nimble, chilling prose, the past looms over the present, turning each into a haunted place.
“In his haunting, strikingly original new novel, [Dan] Chaon takes formidable risks, dismantling his timeline like a film editor.”—The New York Times Book Review
“The scariest novel of the year . . . ingenious . . . Chaon’s novel walks along a garrote stretched taut between Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock.”—The Washington Post
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The end was as though the author had a bunch of loose threads and just dumped them in a paragraph! I hated the 2 and 3 column prose but not as much as the wandering ideas that never took hold. I kept hoping it would get better, but alas, I was just reading to get to the end.
A sense of unease, which transforms into dread, accompanies the reader throughout this novel. Following a childhood tragedy, several of the main characters remember the incident—and do or do not move on from it—in different and unpredictable ways. Toss in the setting—Cleveland during the height of the as-yet-unacknowledged opioid crisis—and a possible serial killer, along with a narrative told by several characters at various points in the past and present, and the result is a book that I had a hard time putting down. The ending was unpredictable; I did not find it as inconclusive as others apparently did.
The author used some innovative formatting that affected the way the story could be read. All the characters had unique “voices.”
THE book was well written which kept me reading but I was not enthralled with the ending and unanswered questions.
I purchased this because of a review by NYTimes mystery reviewer. I’ve realized, that no matter how violent and haunting mysteries/ thrillers may be, one of the draws for me is that, although- clearly- (good) people die/suffer, somehow- perhaps not in this, if series- justice and goodness somehow win in the end- even holding up a single bloody tattered flag. Not in this book. It’s well written. It’s compelling. In the end- not a thread of good waves in a chill breeze. No glimpse of hope. Bleak, dark, pain and endless suffering. I just can’t. I need that bit of redemption to stave off what’s going on out there. I need to believe in justice and humanity. It’s only ill will here.
Terrible didn’t finish
Ill Will by Dan Chaon is a chimera. It shimmers just out of reach like a highway heat mirage, hypnotic, addictive, seductive. Ironically, the same can be said for human memory. How much of what we remember is actually true?
The tale is decidedly post-modern. It is intertextual and follows no rules and respects no boundaries dictated by genre. It is mystery, horror, psychology and more.
Mr Chaon’s literary skills are phenomenal. The prose reads like poetry. He wastes no words. Every pause is filled with action. There is not one single info dump. All the information comes naturally as it would in real life. Even though various characters take turns telling the tale, they are all totally believable and somehow engaging even as they fall prey to obsession and begin to lose touch with reality.
Readers experience this dark tale of obsession through the memories of highly flawed characters. Each has a unique, believable voice, and each struggles to understand the present by unraveling wavering memories of the past. These house-of-mirrors discrepancies pull readers into the text and keep them guessing. Even at the end, many readers will continue to stare at that last page, waiting for more mirages to appear.
The protagonist is Dustin Tillman, a psychologist haunted by garbled memories of abuse and a mass murder that involved his parents. Perhaps in an attempt to come to terms with these childhood memories, he becomes involved in investigating a series of current murders. Tillman appears to have a tenuous hold on reality that makes him vulnerable to manipulation and allows one of his patients to slip into his personal life. This mistake creates an avalanche of disaster that threatens to bury all those he cares for.
Ill Will is very highly recommended and will leave readers questioning the veracity of their own memories. After all, obsession is indeed contagious.
If we are defined by our traitorous memories, then who are we, really?
Rougeski