REVIEW: The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
"Funny how that works out, isn’t it? That we can find the most unexpected things when we aren’t even looking for them."
Executive Summary: Linus Baker works as a caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY). He has done so for the past seventeen years. As a caseworker, he visits orphanages to ensure the children’s wellbeing and makes recommendations about the orphanages to DICOMY. He’s got a spare tire around his middle and worryingly high blood pressure. When he is sent by Extremely Upper Management on a Classified Level Four assignment to the Marsyas Orphanage - with its enigmatic master, Mr. Arthur Parnassus - Linus will learn what it means to wield power in the lives of misunderstood children.
Star Rating: This one is a four star read for me. However, I will be purchasing my own copy of this book to reread. It was absurdly cozy and adorably heartfelt. It engaged with its moral throughline while refraining from becoming a condescending lecture on the importance of inclusion and not fostering prejudice. Maybe its a 4.5 star. . .
Content Rating: PG. It’s a piece of fiction that is intended for adults. I mean, the main character is forty. However, there’s no sexual content. I think the foulest word used is “damn.” The main character, Linus Baker, is a wonderful role model who develops a flustery and hilarious crush. He’s gay and, refreshingly, its just not a big deal.
Review (with spoilers!):
A necessary bit of personal context before we get started is that I volunteer with CASA. “Court Appointed Special Advocates” are assigned to child welfare cases by a judge to visit with the children in the foster system before they are permanently placed. CASAs visit the kids in their foster homes, interview the foster parents, teachers, doctors, therapists, etc. and then make a recommendation to the judge about the child’s best interest. So, beginning this journey with Linus Baker, the DICOMY caseworker, was familiar territory. At CASA, we are coached to remain impartial and removed emotionally from the recommendations that we are making for our kids. Linus’ devotion to DICOMY’s handbook Rules and Regulations was endearing and quite accurate. With this in mind, onward, readers!
I’ve not recently encountered a book that manages to subvert so many tropes altogether.
This story contains the Hero’s Journey - but the hero is a portly and particular forty year old man that owns a cat who hates him.
This story contains romance - but the characters do not so much as glance at each other for the entire book. Furthermore, the romance comes out of nowhere! Linus, early in the book, thinks “He’d accepted long ago that some people, no matter how good their heart was or how much love they had to give, would always be alone.” When he finds himself crushing on Arthur, I believe his response to his own reaction is, “Well, that just won’t do.” Incredible.
This story contains adventure - but the adventure is the internal monologue of a man taking a train to a town with an orphanage.
This story contains magic - but the magic is often ancillary to the regular trappings of the human heart. Really, you have to squint to see the ordinary magic through the extraordinary magic of kindness. (I fully forgot that Chauncey was an amphibeous…slug(?)…multiple times.)
In short, it was a positively delicious read.
Dialogue
The dialogue between characters was often laugh out loud funny. I love dry wit. I hate when authors try and insert such wit by merely typing “He said, dryly.” Klune must be my kindred spirit. More often than not, he manages to insert the sardonic tone into the words between the quotation marks. It’s a wonderful feat of writing and a tribute to a clever sense of humor. Here’s an example of what I mean:
“I have no idea what’s going on,” he said. “I’m not even sure if I’m here.”
“Yes,” Ms. Bubblegum said sympathetically. “Sounds like quite the existential crisis. Perhaps consider having it somewhere else.”
Perhaps consider having it somewhere else. Immaculate. God, can you imagine someone at your OFFICE JOB responding that way to you about ANYTHING?! It’s like a Dilbert comic.
Nature v. Nurture
There is plenty to discuss about this book: fear becoming prejudice, the tension between what expectation and reality, mundanity versus fantasy, and more. What I desire to discuss the most is Linus’ relationship to Lucy. (Just now, in typing their names together, I realize there’s a Peanuts reference lying in plain sight. How unexpected!)
We’ve discussed Linus’ characterization a bit. Let me provide some spoilers for Lucy. Lucy is a nickname for a six year old boy at Marsyas. Lucy’s mother is dead and his father is absent. For all intents and purposes, he is an orphan. But, why, you’re asking, is he in a DICOMY orphanage? That’s simple.
Lucy is short for Lucifer. Lucy’s father is the Devil.
Lucy is the Antichrist.
When Linus reads this in Lucy’s file, he faints. Out like a light. He then begins to construct terrible realities of what he will shortly be subjected to at this orphanage. “Antichrist” conjures up such specific images, that it is difficult not to engage in prejudice. However, Klune again engages in clever subversion of this classic horror trope. What do you do with a six year old boy plagued by nightmares of darkness untold? Lucy loves to listen to music, specifically the “golden oldies.” He hangs records in his room as a tribute to the day music died. He loves baked goods and has the darkest, macabre sense of humor. After all, he has been told his entire life that all he will ever amount to is being the Herald of the Apocalypse. It is an interesting discussion of nature vs. nurture.
A moment in the story that remained with me was how desperate Lucy was to be seen as good. He is showing Linus his room and they begin bonding over the records that Lucy has hung on the walls. Afterwards, Linus is speaking with Arthur about how much pressure the world places on children via preconceived notions. Linus had walked into the interaction expecting doom-and-gloom because, apparently, that’s what “Antichrist” means.1 He does not know what to do with Lucy’s abject boyishness.
Later, Linus is then woken up by Lucy’s nightmare manifesting. Lucy describes the experience of being half-human, half-Satan’s-spawn as “having spiders in the gray matter.” When Lucy sleeps, he cannot control the “spiders” very well at all. Because, well, he’s six. Linus comes to the house, to see Arthur holding Lucy while he goes full The Omen. In the face of supernatural woo-woo, Arthur straightens his spine and whispers:
I know you’re scared. I know sometimes you see things when you close your eyes that no one should ever see. But there is good in you, Lucifer, overwhelmingly so. I know there is. You are special. You are important. Not just to the others. But to me. There has never been anyone like you before, and I see you for all that you are, and all the things you aren’t. Come home. All I want you to do is come home.
I don’t know if you, dear reader, have ever had the sheer displeasure of experiencing a panic attack, but I would give anything to have someone say those exact words to me while I am spiraling. Hell, they could even call me Lucifer.
Even now, those words are a reminder that I just want to be seen as good. If I was only known by the very worst things I am capable of doing - not even things I had actually done - I don’t think I would turn out very good at all. Which ties me into my last point…
Children Will Listen
There’s been some discourse about the inspiration of this book, mostly negative. In an interview, the author admitted that he had heard about residential schools in Canada and the framework for Cerulean began to take shape.
There has been much ink spilled on the topic of residential schools. I won’t belabor the point. The crucial difference between residential schools + detention centers + foster systems and orphanages is that, in the former, the children’s parents are still alive. Recalling that I volunteer as a CASA, it is a crucial difference because, in interviewing children to determine their best interests, they all want one thing: to go home to their parents. Often, they have been removed for horrifying reasons. If you can think it, it’s probably a reason for removal. The government wields so much power over the lives of these children. With the stroke of a pen, a judge can remove a child from his parents, separate him from his siblings, and send him to a home that he does not get a say in. CASA tries to alleviate some of this traumatization - but the entire process is traumatizing regardless of our best intentions.
However, something that they always remind us in writing our CASA reports: the children will gain access to their CPS file when they reach the age of majority. A man who came of age in the foster system read the caseworker’s report from the last meeting he had with his parents. What did the report say? One sentence.
“The children seem sad.”
Nothing gets past that caseworker, geez.
As children are put into care, they hear everything. Their files begin to grow. Soon, they are reduced to the violence they have experienced, the diagnoses they have been given, the reports their prior caregivers have made. They might not be the Antichrist but everyone begins to have preconceived notions about them.
What I loved about this book - and the character of Linus Baker in particular - is the reminder and invitation to meet children experiencing trauma where they are, as they are. And to meet them with kindness.
TL;DR: Working with tramatized youth is hard and humans have a tendency towards prejudice. Even if the youth is the Antichrist, let him surprise you. Also, this book will give you warm fuzzies!
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Antichrist has quite the opposite to say on this topic. Chiefly, the Antichrist learns to defy Christ with intention and planning. There’s a ton of interesting speculative fiction on this topic. Father Elijah by Michael O’Brien is an example where the titular character is tasked by the Pope to go and essentially crisis negotiate with the Antichrist. Talk him off the ledge of cataclysm.