The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
To Magical Beings, Bursting Bubbles, and Found Family
“Don’t you wish you were here?”
Linus Baker’s mouse pad—with a faded picture of a white sandy beach and the bluest ocean—asked. Each day that he worked on that wooden desk, in front of the dull-green glow of his computer, he would look at that mouse pad and wished that he were. But more than just a taunting item on his desk — Row L, Desk 7 — at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY), it’s a question that kept being repeated throughout the book.
When Linus was ordered to visit the Marsyas Island orphanage, he was ready to treat it as any other visit he'd done before. Yes, the secrecy surrounding this assignment and Extremely Upper Management’s warnings and expectations were a little intimidating, but he’s been a caseworker for 17 years and he’s very good at his job. With his DICOMY-issued RULES AND REGULATIONS, a grumpy cat in its crate, and complete faith in the system he serves, Linus set out to the island determined to keep his investigation professional and clinical — just the way it was supposed to be.
But then he saw the vibrant green of grass and tree, the pinks and golds of blooming flowers, the white and yellow of a bright sun shining down on a sandy beach, and the vast cerulean of the ocean. And within it, six magical children and the master of the Marsyas house whose everyday reality in the island is as every bit foreign to him as the people he was tasked to investigate.
Don’t you wish you were here?
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune explores what it means to see and to be seen. To examine the bubbles we’ve created for ourselves and the reality of the world right outside its filmy and flimsy surface.
At the beginning of the story, Linus seems to be your usual square who’s got a lot of opinions about the world that he would much rather keep to himself than suffer the consequences of sharing them. If he can continue following the rules as they are and keep unwanted attention away from him, then all can be alright.
In the first chapter alone, he refrained from giving a child a comforting pat on the shoulder because it wouldn’t be proper for a caseworker to do, and he admonished the master of the house for asking about what he would write in his report because it’s against the rules. However, in that same chapter, the master expressed that the children like him mainly because he isn’t like the other caseworkers who “don’t see the children, not for who they are, only for what they’re capable of,” and in fact was confident enough to ask Linus why he was working for institutions like DICOMY, because there was something about him that showed her he cares.
His resolve to stick to the RULES AND REGULATIONS was tested at Marsyas, when everything he’d known and experienced hadn’t prepared him for Talia, a gnome who would threaten to hit him with a shovel but who had the most breathtaking garden; Phee, an apprehensive forest sprite who can hear the songs of the Earth; Sal, a timid were-Pomeranian whose writing was the most beautiful he’d read; Theodore, a wyvern who would treat a gift as simple as a button as treasure; Chauncey, a blob of unknown origin whose dream is to be a bellhop; and Lucy, the antichrist, who loved music and adventures more than anything.
By going beyond the casefiles and the ideas Extremely Upper Management has drilled into him about the children, it removed this inner filter that scrutinises whether his actions or reactions were permitted by the rules. For all the judgement and trauma the children endured, Linus learned that there’s still within them a deep well of hope that the world that feared and couldn’t understand them, may one day accept them.
This realisation was underscored when he got to know Arthur Parnassus, the master of the orphanage whose unconditional love nurtured the children’s dreams and provided for them a home where they can live normally and just be themselves.
So he buried that version of him who insisted he remain impartial. Instead, Linus allowed himself to be the kind of guardian he’s always wanted to be.
This also meant acknowledging the façade he’s built for himself to satisfy a world that punishes compassion and kindness, and that these were his first steps at freeing himself from that.
However, preconceived notions don’t just affect the perceptions of people who hear them, but more so those for whom they are about.
Take Lucy, who may hide behind jokes about his demonic origin — saying things like “How am I supposed to make new friends if I can’t tell them about how they’ll die?” — but is terrified of his dreams of death and destruction. A 6-year-old boy who tries to reconcile his nature to how he is being nurtured in the orphanage. He describes this internal struggle as spiders in his head that are trying to consume him, and it didn’t help that there are those that kept pushing the idea that wickedness is his birthright.
There’s Chauncey, who people have called a monster. And so one morning in three, you would find him hiding under your bed waiting to frighten you, because that’s what he thought he was supposed to be doing.
The book is very careful about its treatment of processing trauma. Two or three times it has repeated how children are very resilient, but puts emphasis on the need for healing. With Lucy, he has sessions with Arthur where they talk about morality and discuss the nuances that come with it, saying, “Because people aren’t black and white. No matter how hard you try, you can’t stay on one path without diversions. And that doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.”
When speaking about an incident involving Sal biting the person who struck him, they said, “If you raise your hand enough, they will cower. But every now and then, they will strike back because that’s all they have left.”
Now and then there are scenes where the children themselves say “it’s nothing I can’t handle” as if the prejudice is something they should accept. The focus now isn’t on how special they are with their abilities—it’s in showing that they are capable of understanding the world around them. And true enough, the book also tells us that this care for their well-being must continue even into their adulthood. That while they’re working on fortifying themselves against the great big world outside of the island, even adults need support when the situation calls for it.
There were moments in the story where Arthur would look at him and say, “I don’t know why you can’t see it,” the implications of which make Linus uncomfortable. Because finally he’s not blended in with the paint on the wall, the people of Marsyas — Arthur — are seeing him.
While not front and centre in the book, I honestly was so invested in this relationship that for the longest time I was looking forward to scenes in which they’re together, no matter if it’s a discussion on moral philosophy or an uncovering of dark pasts. Theirs was a dynamic that worked for me because wouldn’t it be nice to have someone finally see you as a person?
We joke about the “mortifying ordeals of being known”, but I reckon it’d be much better than the alternative.
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune is a story that tackles the nuances and perplexities that shape individual thought in modern society, from our groupthink tendencies to our penchant for putting people in boxes. However, it’s told through the beats of children’s literature, one that I feel is most appropriate because it’s made the world more hopeful. It’s about acceptance, finding what you love and are willing to protect, with found family at its core.
I find that if you’re a person who struggles to find your place in the world, or indeed, accept that you can belong, this is a good reminder that other people don’t get to dictate who you should be just to be accepted. The world may yet prove that it’s worthy to see you in all your brightness and colours, but you’re the only one allowed to shape and make sense of your identity.
Don’t you wish you were here?