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
more
Chaon is quite wicked the way he plays with the reader. Two connected and yet unconnected murders. Two slices of time. Immerse yourself in the characters. Suspect more and more along the way.
I can vaguely remember the media obsession with Satan worshipers and cults in the 80’s. I was pretty young, but the stories were all over the news and the playground. This novel takes the hysteria and uses it in a tangential way. The tragedy that kicks this whole book off was blamed on Satan worshiping and repressed memories were used in the conviction. Fast forward 30 or so years, and everything starts to fall apart.
Chaon uses multiple timelines and multiple points of view to tell this story, sometimes you have to get a page or two into a chapter to figure out who the narrator is. Add that to the knowledge that not one of the narrators is very trustworthy, and you get a taste of how this is all going to unfold. What is really going on? No one, including you, will ever really know. I was surprised at how the book ended, but shouldn’t have been. To be honest, I stayed up way too late to read as much as I could in one sitting. It’s that good.
Scariest book that I’ve ever read. Lovely, haunting and kept me me thinking – trying to connect story, characters, themes and symbolism. No cut and dry answers, but that is to the book’s benefit.
I didn’t care for this book, but read it for our book club. I found that I couldn’t get into the world described. I didn’t identify with any character and I didn’t feel like I got much of a story. I particularly don’t care for the ending.
Ill Will is Beyond Disturbing, but in a Subtle Way
Some books hit you like a punch to the midsection. Ian McGuire’s The North Water and Jon Clinch’s Finn bring a harsh, unyielding world to you, and then throw unyielding characters at you until you are down for the count.
Bird Box by Josh Malerman and Stranded by Bracken MacLeod take a great premise, and bring it to you without pause.
Some books drip with disquieting human truths on every page. Gillian Flynn’s books do this, in particular Sharp Objects.
Ill Will is different than these, but no less disturbing. More, in some ways.
There is little violence in this book. It’s talked about second hand, but most of the time it’s the various characters, just going about their lives.
There are murders of course, but they are distant. The characters read about them in the papers, or slowly uncover them through repressed memories.
And yet Ill Will gets into you.
How? It gets into you slowly. You begin to understand the characters, and see the alienation they feel from one another, and you can’t quite understand why at first. There’s some insight yielded to the character Rusty at the end of the book – no spoilers btw –
>
For a while in prison you would go to the group therapy. There was this one guy you felt friendly toward. Dr. Sharp. A young guy—younger than you, by that point you were thirty or so, and he was maybe twenty-four, twenty-five?—and he took you aside one time after a session and he said, “You’re smart, Russell. But you need to understand something. When you’ve been abused in the way you were, you have a virus. And the virus will demand that you pass it on to someone else. You don’t even have that much of a choice.
>
There is some corruption here, so pervasive that you can’t put your finger on it. There’s a seminal event at the center of the book of course, but the character’s alienation from one another is so deep that it goes beyond a single event.
There is a virus of desolation at the center of these character’s lives, and it passes down through their family in subtle ways. Some become detached. Some get into drugs. Some just begin a new life elsewhere.
Some, like our main character, might be going insane. As you read about Dustin, you begin to feel that you might be going insane as well.
It’s not a punch to the midsection, it’s a series of jabs
There are a few reveals here, a few twists and turns. But it’s mostly a steady stream of Ill Will, just pouring into you.
The good news? Read it and you’ll want to be a better person, because you see the desolation of these characters from a distance, in ways they can not.
The extra good news? If you want to be a better person, start by acting the opposite of the way these characters act, even the nice ones.
My only criticism of this book, and it’s not really a criticism – is that it takes a lot of your time. It is a long book, and the quality never goes down. In fact, it only increases. I think about Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth – you don’t want to miss a single sentence, so you end up taking a week or more. You could have read two or three other books, and you read this.
But in any case, I recommend this one. It’s a subtle horror, but at the end it will leave you shaken.
This story has everything and you must get to the end to discover how it all comes together.I was horrified at the end.
Not a happy moment in the entire book through 3 generations, wore me out!
This is one of the better books that I have read lately. The style and characters are interesting, and it kept me guessing to the end. I thought I knew which characters to trust, but . . . .
Text features made this difficult to read.
Disappointing read.
Not a terrible book but the ending leaves the reader at least this reader) empty.
Great read but would like more closure
Ill Will by Dan Chaon is a story that revolves around a family tragedy. That’s all I could ascertain from this story. I couldn’t get into the whole book being back-story. There was a lot of sexual situations. Way too many for my taste. The story was, for me, hard to follow most of the time. I had to read quite a bit of the chapter to find out whose point of view I was reading. The ending didn’t reveal any true insight into the story, or have a real conclusion.
Strange book. Strange characters. Did not enjoy.
It was an interesting and original premise but it was not developed and the ending was extremely predictable and very unsatisfying or interesting
First book I have read by this author. I will definitely read more.
Book to make you think.
WOW!
Slow reading book. I prefer a more fast-paced read, wouldn’t recommend it.
Jumps around between timeline and characters way too much.