Ill Will: A Novel
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Ill Will: A Novel Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Dan Chaon (Author), Ari Fliakos (Narrator), Edoardo Ballerini (Narrator),
3.5 3.5 out of 5 stars 1,791 ratings
Editors' pick Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
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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.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The Wall Street Journal NPR The New York TimesLos Angeles Times The Washington Post Kirkus ReviewsPublishers 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.

Cast of Narrators:
Ari Fliakos as the Narrator
Edoardo Ballerini as Dustin
Michael Crouch as Aaron
Alex McKenna as Wave and Kate
Scott Aiello as Rusty

Praise for Ill Will

“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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  1. Listening Length
    14 hours and 56 minutes
  2. Author
    Dan Chaon
  3. Narrator
    Ari Fliakos, see all
  4. Audible release date
    March 7, 2017
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Random House Audio
  7. ASIN
    B01MS8V23K
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
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Product details

Listening Length 14 hours and 56 minutes
Author Dan Chaon
Narrator Ari Fliakos, Edoardo Ballerini, Michael Crouch, Alex McKenna, Scott Aiello
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date March 07, 2017
Publisher Random House Audio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B01MS8V23K
Best Sellers Rank #106,173 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#619 in Psychological Fiction (Audible Books & Originals)
#2,359 in Psychological Thrillers (Audible Books & Originals)
#3,899 in Literary Fiction (Audible Books & Originals)

Customer reviews

3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5 out of 5
1,791 global ratings
WOW, Made for the late Stanley Kubrik. Too bad.
5 Stars
WOW, Made for the late Stanley Kubrik. Too bad.
Enough said with so many reviews here. If only Stanly Kubrik was still with us. Perfect book for him too adapt. I think he could outdo all of his brilliant work with this one. Would love to see. Too bad.
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Top reviews from the United States

Jessica Sullivan
5.0 out of 5 stars Everything I want in a thriller!
Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2017
Verified Purchase
This book is everything I want in a thriller: smart, literary, DARK, and creepy. Throw in a plot centered around the satanic ritual abuse hysteria from the 80s and the fallibility of human memory and I'm completely sold.

Dustin Tillman's adopted brother Rusty is about to be released from prison—finally exonerated 30 years later for the murder of Dustin's parents, aunt and uncle. Dustin testified against Rusty in the trial when he was a young boy, believing him to have been connected to a sinister satanic cult.

Now, Dustin is a psychologist dealing with the recent death of his wife and the news of Rusty's release. Around this time, a mysterious new patient enters his life, asking for Dustin's help investigating a series of suspicious deaths in the area.

Early on in the novel, we're given hints that we shouldn't know who or what to believe. As Dustin tells his patients, "we're always telling a story to ourselves about ourselves" and attempting to establish order in our lives by assigning meaning and connection where it may not exist.

Ill Will is a story told from multiple perspectives, in different points in time. We come to learn how each character's understanding of events differs depending on their experience, their memories, and the stories they tell themselves.

It's a riveting read rooted in a dark, pervasive sense of disorientation, delusion, and dread.

How much can we trust ourselves and our memories of the past? It's a disquieting question, but a valid one based on actual research about the fallibility of memory.

There's a quote that Chaon used toward the end of the book: "In the end it's the mystery that lasts and not the explanation." This is true of Ill Will, which has a frustratingly nebulous ending that will annoy many readers. Honestly though, I enjoyed the journey so much though that I'm not even that mad about it.
9 people found this helpful
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White Rabbit
4.0 out of 5 stars True American Gothic
Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2017
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This is not really a "thriller." Its more an extended meditation on psychological dread; malevolence; self-doubt; miasma. In other words, true gothic horror, in a contemporary setting. Like Thomas Ligotti, but with no supernatural element. While the unreliability and malleability of memory has been frequently explored, it is done exceptionally well here, where the presentation is not a "narrative" (or even multiple competing narratives) but an attempt to capture each narrator's thought process in real-time. So many of Dustin's thoughts/sentences are unfinished, and kinda just drift off into space like smoke dissipating. This is not a "formatting problem," or missing text, as many reviewers complained; "it's not a bug; it's a feature." Likewise, the ending's lack of certain resolution (which many reviewers, including myself, found frustrating and/or disappointing) is, I suspect, intentional. I think Chaon's point is that we never know for sure.

It was fittingly ironic that the most unreliable narrator of all uses his professional psychobabble primarily as a screen against his own self, and that he affirmatively chooses to ignore/reject/suppress facts/perspectives (like the letter to his dead wife's that he found in his son's room after her death) that may destabilize his own (very shoddy) sense of his own life. The slow unraveling of his thoughts & life after his wife's death, and his eager replacement of her guidance w/his questionable new friend Aqil's, is presented masterfully (shown, not told), but I wish other characters' motivations (primarily the twin sisters' Kate & Wave) were made a bit clearer. Also, while Wave's interpretation that her dad killed her mom & Dusty's parents bc of sexual jealousy is presented as the most likely explanation of their childhood tragedy, given the parents' closeness it just doesn't feel credible that Uncle Lucky would decide to perpetrate this murder/suicide on the eve of a joint family trip to Yellowstone. So ultimately, we don't really know the who/how/why of the childhood tragedy, OR the contemporary string of frat boy drownings. While I wish this was made clearer, I suspect that Chaon's point is that we never really know anything about anything.
5 people found this helpful
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Sascha Pearl
3.0 out of 5 stars Ok...would be better if the Author got out of his way.
Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2017
Verified Purchase
Okay. One of the things that is hardest for me about writing, and reading, reviews is that I don't like to give too much of the plot away. For myself, I like to discover the story on my own.. So I am not going to talk about the story too much, you are not going to get any spoilers here.

I gave this book three stars for a couple of reasons. The first, Dan Chaon can write. Ill Will is a long book but it goes by fast. Second, Chaon is good at building some suspense. That being said there were some things that drove me crazy. For example, there was this spacing thing that happened every once in a while. The next word or line would be a big space away. I don't know if this was a mistake or if it was something that was intended. But every time it appeared it jerked me out of the story. The same could be said about other writing techniques Chaon used, like incomplete sentences and other things that slowed the story down. Add to that that I quickly figured out what was happening and, while there was some suspense, there was little thrill. Honestly, I bought the book because the library book had pages missing and I wanted to know what had happened.
2 people found this helpful
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tarantula arms
2.0 out of 5 stars Did I Miss Something??
Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2021
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One reviewer (from 2017) noted it already, but this book on Kindle is horrible. That's why I'm still wondering if I missed pages, or if an entire section was left out. Initially, great premise and an interesting read. But you begin to wonder if Dustin is insane, confused or spot on. At one point, I thought his friend/patient Aqil was imaginary. (Except for the fact that the kids saw him at Christmas.) Though some have praised Chaon's style of writing, I found it very confusing. And the ending. Just...stopped. I clicked back and forth many times. Did I miss something? Is that it? He's going to lead you all this way and then just
(yeah, see what I did? That's what the book does.)
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Top reviews from other countries

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Robert P. Brown
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and Different
Reviewed in Canada on August 23, 2018
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It is 2012 and a Cleveland Psychologist is dealing with three things:
-His wife has terminal cancer.
-An ex-cop is trying to convince him that a number of recent accidental drowning deaths of drunken college students is really the work of a serial killer.
-His adopted brother, having served thirty years in prison for the supposed murder of his parents, aunt and uncle, has been released based on DNA evidence that he didn`t do it.

Skip back thirty years to the relationship of the brothers and two twin female cousins and the events leading up to the murders. Now forward two years to where one of the Doctor`s two sons , a drug addict who has been in contact with his ex-con uncle, disappears, along with his junkie friend.

All this is told in alternate chapters going back and forth in time, with different narrators. In some cases the narrative is in two or three columns on a page with different story lines.

The overall effect, going on for 460 pages, is well written and engrossing. I have deducted a star because with the format and conclusion, I feel Chaon is trying to be just a little too clever.

That being said, for the discerning reader, looking for something interesting and different, I highly recommend this book.
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Cliente Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars Truly great
Reviewed in Spain on January 28, 2020
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One of the best books i’ve read in the last couple of years.
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Carlos Pacheco
3.0 out of 5 stars Quite interesting though it has a style sometimes confusion
Reviewed in Brazil on June 13, 2017
Verified Purchase
I'm kind of disappointed with the closure of such plot. The storyline can keep the grip throughout the almost 500 pages. However, some questions remained unanswered when you finish off the reading, such as what the real motivation for the present crimes was? I also got very upset with the parallel narratives the author placed in some lingering chapters, when you had to read side by side, 2 or 3 at the same time, not to mention the unfinished phrases or missing words in several parts (I initially thought this could be a failure of my e-reader, but later saw a review in which the reviewer complained about the same thing). Not sure what author wanted to accomplish with such style, other than puzzle the reader.
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bej
5.0 out of 5 stars Dan Shaon un maître du polar
Reviewed in France on December 8, 2018
Verified Purchase
Thriller passionnant. Une histoire de serial killer sur plusieurs générations qui conserve tout au long du livre la même intensité.
Dan Chaon utilise une technique de narration particulière multi-facettes tout à fait adaptée à la réaction des différents personnages face à une même situation.
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HJ
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 29, 2017
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Bizarre and emotional.
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