Ill Will

In his haunting, strikingly original new novel, [Dan] Chaon takes formidable risks, dismantling his timeline like a film editor and building the narrative with short, urgent chapters told from a few key perspectives. . . . As the story spins toward its inexorable conclusion, only the reader ascertains what is happening-a sinking realization that rattles the psyche and interferes with sleep. I read the concluding sections with increasing horror; the ending, twisting in the author's assured hands like a Rubik's Cube, is at once predictable and harrowing. Somehow, it resolved nothing and left me shaken. I believed this could happen-I believed all of it-and the only thing more terrifying than that is the possibility of another Dan Chaon novel. I will be nervously looking forward to it.-The New York Times Book Review The scariest novel of the year . . . ingenious . . . By now we should all be on guard against Dan Chaon, but there's just no effective defense against this cunning writer. The author of three novels and three collections of short stories, he draws on our sympathies even while pricking our anxieties. Before beginning his exceptionally unnerving new book, go ahead and lock the door, but it won't help. You'll still be stuck inside yourself, which for Chaon is the most precarious place to be. . . . There's something irresistibly creepy about this story, which stems from the thrill of venturing into illicit places of the mind. . . . Chaon's novel walks along a garrote stretched taut between Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock. By the time we realize what's happening, we've gone too far to turn back. We can only inch forward into the darkness, bracing for what might come next.-The Washington Post Powerful . . . Chaon is one of America's best and most dependable writers, and in the end, Ill Will is a ruthlessly 'realistic' piece of fiction about the unrealistic beliefs people entertain about their world.-Los Angeles Times Spanning more than thirty years, this intriguing novel about a tightly wired criminal psychologist with a murky past has the tension of a thriller plus the emotional release of justice finally served.-O: The Oprah Magazine Powerfully unsettling . . . A ranking master among neo-pulp stylists, Chaon adds to the book's disorienting effects by playing with the physical text. Some chapters take the form of parallel columns, two or three to a page. White spaces and uneven alignments push words, sentences-and thoughts-apart. . . . While such touches underscore the author's playful approach, the writerly stagecraft keeps the reader off guard and sometimes on edge, in a kind of altered cognitive state. There's a lot going on under the surface of Ill Will-more than one reading will reveal. Going back and reading this oddly compelling book again will only provide more pleasure.-Chicago Tribune Terrifically eerie . . . The thriller transcends its genre to become a fascinating study in generational trauma. . . . Too few writers prize atmosphere as much as narrative tautness. With Ill Will, Chaon succeeds at delivering both.-The Dallas Morning News Outstanding . . . Following writers like Richard Matheson and Shirley Jackson, Dan Chaon writes in the spooky tradition of suburban gothic. . . . An unreliable narrator can often feel like a cheap trick in the novelist's playbook, but Mr. Chaon employs it masterfully, integrating unreliability into the book's very typography. . . . Mr. Chaon's writing is cool and precise, but his story is thrillingly unstable. It also boasts, at the end, a traditional horror-novel payoff I didn't see coming-Stephen King couldn't have done it better.-The Wall Street Journal One of the best thrillers I've encountered in a very, very long time, Dan Chaon's latest novel will chill you to the bone and keep you guessing at every turn.-Newsweek If you're up for being caught in a seamy heartland underbelly of fear, superstition, and paranoia, with side excursio