The Vision

Short Review: This isn't a superhero story, this is a suburban life, ‘we want to fit in but can't' story. The Dad has a dream of fitting in and being the perfect family. The wife can't live up to the dream but will do what it takes to make the dream look like it is working. The kids are standard kids that haven't don't know that what they are living is a manufactured reality.

There is a overt focus on the vision family really being a story about racial integration, but I am not sure that less than subtle thread fully works. The Shakespeare speech as an overlay for one of the action sequences is brilliant design, but a bit too on the nose.

The end, Vision loves his broken family and will do what it takes to solve the problem and look like a perfect family, feels a bit too much like 1950s literary fiction is supposed to be like.

I don't want to Jesus Juke the story, but one of the problems with the conception of humanity revealed here is where sin fits in. Vision's family is endangered by the sin of another. Virginia's sin, and her additional sin of lying about the first sin, have consequences. That part fits in a broader Christian conception of reality. But the goal is off. Christianity knows that humanity by design is limited and flawed. Only God is perfect. Vision in his attempt to be God and create the perfect family does not fully comprehend how the imperfection will work. And instead of sacrificing himself to redeem the sin, he sacrifices another.

Full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/vision/