Ill Will

"In his haunting, strikingly original new novel, Chaon takes formidable risks. . . . 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." New York Times Book Review

"The scariest novel of the year . . . By now we should all be on guard against Dan Chaon, but there's just no effective defense against this cunning writer. . . . 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

"Outstanding . . . Following writers like Richard Matheson and Shirley Jackson, Dan Chaon writes in the spooky tradition of suburban gothic. . . . 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

"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

"Reading a truly terrifying novel can make you feel like you're drowning. . . . As Chaon moves nimbly between viewpoints, calling memories and relationships into question, a powerful undercurrent of dread begins to form beneath the story, slowly but inexorably pulling you under." Entertainment Weekly

"In his haunting, strikingly original new novel, Chaon takes formidable risks. . . . 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." New York Times Book Review

"The scariest novel of the year . . . By now we should all be on guard against Dan Chaon, but there's just no effective defense against this cunning writer. . . . 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

"Outstanding . . . Following writers like Richard Matheson and Shirley Jackson, Dan Chaon writes in the spooky tradition of suburban gothic. . . . 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

"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

"Reading a truly terrifying novel can make you feel like you're drowning. . . . As Chaon moves nimbly between viewpoints, calling memories and relationships into question, a powerful undercurrent of dread begins to form beneath the story, slowly but inexorably pulling you under." Entertainment Weekly