{"id":6544,"date":"2017-04-20T06:41:05","date_gmt":"2017-04-20T10:41:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6544"},"modified":"2017-04-20T06:41:05","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T10:41:05","slug":"ill-will","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6544","title":{"rendered":"*****Ill Will"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cemetery\"

photo: Andrew, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

Written by Dan Chaon \u2013 Past and present crimes haunt the two main protagonists of this beautifully crafted new literary thriller. In the present day, psychologist Dustin Tillman lives in suburban Cleveland, Ohio. One son is away at college, and his younger son, Aaron, is supposedly taking college courses locally. In truth, he and his friend Rabbit are heavy into the drug scene, and part of the story is told in Aaron\u2019s spot-on voice.<\/p>\n

Dustin grew up part of a closely knit family in small-town western Nebraska. Two brothers had married two sisters, and Dustin was the child of one pair, and his twin cousins Wave and Kate the daughters of the other. In addition, his parents adopted a teenager, Russell Bickers, whose previous foster family died in a fire. Rusty and Dusty.<\/p>\n

Dusty is a dreamy, highly suggestible kid. Rusty and the twins entertain themselves with manufacturing Dusty\u2019s memories, putting him places he hasn\u2019t been, including him in scenes he hasn\u2019t observed, making him not trust his own senses and memories.<\/p>\n

Dustin\u2019s parents are oblivious to all this, boozing and using, and the siblings may be careless about which spouse they sleep with. Early on, you learn that when Dustin was thirteen and the girls seventeen, all four parents were shot to death. Kate believed Rusty did it. Wave did not. And Dustin\u2019s memories are, well. Thirty years later now, DNA evidence exonerates Rusty, and he\u2019s released from prison to lurk on the fiery horizon of the story like a rising sun.<\/p>\n

Interwoven with the exploration of these past events is a narrative about mysterious present-day deaths. Dusty\u2019s patient Aqil Ozorowski\u2014a police officer on medical leave\u2014is obsessed with the accidental drowning of a series of male college students. Over a period of years, young men\u2019s bodies have been found in lakes and rivers of the Midwest, some with what Ozorowski deems significant dates of death, like 10\/10\/10. The authorities are frustratingly unconcerned, saying the students simply fell into the water, drunk, but Ozorowski rails at the lack of proper investigation. Eventually he inveigles Dustin in some unofficial research.<\/p>\n

Aaron thinks his dad is a fool. The whole family mocks the \u201castral traveling\u201d when Dustin\u2019s attention just . . . goes. Dustin suffered bouts of sleepwalking after his family\u2019s murders, and in some respects, he still sleepwalks through life. Chaon typographically expresses the tendency of minds to wander, through blanks in the middle of\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You get the idea. After a while, this technique establishes a dreamy disconnect that seems not just real, but really dangerous.<\/p>\n

Chaon is a widely praised short story writer and was a National Book Award finalist for an early collection. He has no trouble here sustaining interest in the actions and fates of his fascinating, flawed characters. If you tire of thrillers where the characters are no deeper than the page they\u2019re written on, you\u2019ll find this richly presented family a welcome change.<\/p>\n

A longer version of this review appeared on CrimeFictionLover.com<\/a>. You can order a copy with the affiliate link below.
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Dan Chaon \u2013 Past and present crimes haunt the two main protagonists of this beautifully crafted new literary thriller. In the present day, psychologist Dustin Tillman lives in suburban Cleveland, Ohio. One son is away at college, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"*****Ill Will - a fine literary thriller in which the past is as dangerous as the present","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,40,3,126],"tags":[969,970,678,472],"class_list":["post-6544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-fiction","category-mystery","category-reading-2","tag-dan-chaon","tag-ill-will","tag-murder","tag-noir"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Hy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6546,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6544\/revisions\/6546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}