12. The House in the Cerulean Sea

By TJ Klune 

I heard wonderful things about this book - where, I can't recall - maybe I scanned a few Goodreads reviews?  I was looking for a good contemporary fantasy and this sounded like it would satiate what I was missing, so I purposely didn’t read anything more. Earlier this summer, I saw a copy at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly and got a slight discount with some kids’ books I was getting as gifts (regular price was $25! then later saw this used for $14 when I was in Vancouver).   

Now that I’ve read it.. it's going in the pile to sell to SW Welch after this review is done.  Even though I enjoyed THintCS well enough, I need a big dollop of darkness with my fantasy, thank you very much.  The House in the Cerulean Sea was too feel- good n' cutesy for my taste, though there were touching parts that managed to pull some hardened heartstrings. 

Still, the style reminded me of the first and only Harry Potter book I read, except this is an American writer simulating how English people would talk.  Unassuming middle-aged case worker Linus Baker is a dedicated employee at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. One day he gets a special month long assignment from Extremely Upper Management to investigate a peculiar orphanage that may be going a bit rogue. Linus and his cat travel by train to remote Marsyus island which is guarded by an ancient sprite named Ms Chapelwhite.  There, Linus gets to know the unusual magical children and their guardian, the mysterious Arthur Parnassus.  

Linus Baker’s ‘real’ world has been done before.  His workplace is a very Brazil-esque bureaucracy and everyone he encounters is cold and callous – his boss is a harridan, his coworkers are soulless automatons, and his neighbour Edith Clapper is an old shrew.  So far, cliched and two-dimensional. The queer romance that develops later between Linus and Arthur Parnassus was the only thing that might be considered ‘daring’, yet even their romance was unrealistic, like something out of Love, Actually.  Much of the narrative was conventional and safe, in the sense that everything goes down smoothly - like syrup, or treacle.  

If there’s fire and brimstone, it’s in the form a young boy nicknamed Lucy, who’s one of Arthur’s charges and who happens to be the Anti-Christ.  Extremely Upper Management are concerned that this boy will grow into his Satanic powers and take over the world and they want Linus to make sure that Arthur is doing his job to keep these children under control and out of sight from society.  For the rest of the unusual children, there’s a female gnome, a forest sprite, a shape-shifter who can only turn into a small dog, an unnamed tentacled species who longs to be a bellhop when he grows up.  Pretty cute stuff.  Klune makes sure to point out that two of the characters have dark skin, lest readers think that everyone in the book is white.

 

There's no big conflict in the novel, and no one is truly evil.  Linus has the typical character arc where he gradually comes out of his nerdy, bureaucratic shell and falls in love with the island, its inhabitants, esp. Arthur.  And of course, Linus realizes that his menial job and previous life is not what it's cracked up to be.  Despite his pudgy body, Linus becomes a fierce protector of the children, especially against some of the bigoted human villagers and helps save the day. 

All this is perfect fodder for a Hollywood movie – a Pleasantville for magical beings (I believe there's already a HBO production in the works).  Linus Baker has only known a life in monochrome until he stepped into the Technicolor world of Marsyas Island and its colourful inhabitants.  This is Klune's schtick - the end of the book included a preview for his next book, which read like a screenplay for a new Ricky Gervais movie.

 

Thus, I made a grave mistake in not learning enough about this book before buying it - if I had, I would’ve realized it was the literary equivalent of Love, Actually - a hit everyone loved and if you criticize it in any way, you’re looked upon as a cold-hearted miser.  More importantly, if I had really done my research, I would’ve learned how TJ Klune was inspired to write this book in the first place - he had read about the Sixties Scoop and my country's horrifying Residential School System that tortured and traumatized generations of indigenous children.  Keep in mind, this was before the unmarked graves were discovered in May 2021.  Even then, as a white male author, Klune knew he couldn’t write a fictional book without appropriating the horrors of colonized First Nations people, so his workaround was to write a glossy, charming fantasy novel about magical beings instead.

Let’s be clear, even if I hadn’t known about the Sixties Scoop connection, I felt THitCS was kept light and gently heart-string tuggy for mass appeal and, to its detriment, was safe and PC.  The Golden Compass was a far superior book dealing with similar themes but with the gravitas, subtlety and courage to deal with dark, difficult subjects that was sorely lacking in Klune’s writing, which glosses over anything that could be potentially disturbing or uncomfortable.

 

While I was in Vancouver, I also found a used copy of The Bone Clocks, and will give this a go next – still thirsting for some contemporary fantasy with substance.  So far, Mitchell's far superior writing skills is a nice change of scenery...