Ill Will

Dustin Tillman is a recently widowed Cleveland-area psychologist who uses hypnotism to treat patients. Thirty years ago, Dustin’s parents were murdered, and his adopted brother Rusty was convicted based on Dustin and his cousin Kate’s testimony. Now Rusty has been exonerated and released, and Dustin fears that Rusty might want revenge. To add to his worries, his patient-turned-friend, ex-cop Aquil, suspects that a serial killer is murdering young men in the area and staging their deaths to look like accidents, and he wants Dustin to validate his hypothesis. Meanwhile, Aaron, Dustin’s heroin-using teenage son makes contact with Rusty and finds himself drawn into Aquil’s investigation, all while learning some very unsettling family history.

Dan Chaon’s latest novel is a character study in a thriller’s skin. It is creepy, suspenseful, and unsettling while also offering a multifaceted exploration of its complex and deeply flawed protagonists.

Chaon achieves this by balancing multiple perspectives. If frequent POV changes irk you as a reader, this is not the novel for you. The viewpoint fluctuates not only between Dustin, his son, and his cousins but also between past and present and between conventional narration and an epistolary form. Through these multiple vantage points, Chaon is able to successfully shade his characters and alter readers’ perceptions of them. For example, in the segments he narrates in the present, Dustin comes across as unfortunate and put-upon, forever unable to finish his sentences as friends and patients besiege him with their problems. But through Aaron’s eyes, he comes across as out-of-touch and a bit pathetic. Meanwhile, Kate and her twin sister’s segments show him to be extremely naïve as a child, and his own way, more off-putting than Rusty, whose bad-boy image and all-for-show mock-embrace of Satanism made him a likely suspect when family members turned up dead.

These shifts in perspective and perception work well to advance the idea that memory is malleable. Therein lies the book’s true horror: the notion that those who are privy to monstrous truths may not be able to honestly recollect them. Chaon uses the 1980s Satanic ritual abuse panic as an entry point for fleshing out this theme, and while that occupies an important place in the backstory, it is otherwise underplayed. Considering how many people were maligned by the fantasies of prosecutors and social workers and considering how forgotten the panic is today, it really could have benefitted from more emphasis here.

In place of that Chaon, who is capable of writing tightly controlled prose when the mood strikes him, too often lets his writing become self-indulgent. Between disjointed journal entries, drug-fueled musings, and a lot of distractingly unorthodox typography, there is too much here that, while stylistically distinct, contributes precious little and undermines the book’s otherwise-excellent tension. Moreover, Ill Will builds toward a conclusion that is as contrived as it is unsatisfying.

Though Chaon’s rich characterization and skillful treatment of tension and theme can’t mask all of the novel’s shortcomings, Ill Will is still two-thirds of a good read and worthwhile for its treatment of memory alone.

7.75/10