The House in the Cerulean Sea, written by TJ Klune, is a book I thoroughly enjoyed. I was executing a light read, with themes of conquering fear and love being the answer, and was met with these and satisfied, but I was also given so much more. I absolutely adored the characters and how different they were from anything I had read before. This book is considered part of the fantasy fiction genre but has a surprisingly decent amount of comedy mixed into it.
While reading through the text for the second time, I searched for clues that would lead me to a possible premise for the book. According to McKee the premise of a book is described as, “an open-ended question” (112). The House in the Cerulean Sea follows the life of a man, Linus Baker, who lives by the rules. He is employed by The Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY) and does not question their somewhat tyrannical hold over magical beings. He simply does his job and goes home to his quaint and uninteresting life; “He turned right down a smaller street, and there, sitting on the left, was 86 Hermes Way. Home,” (Klune 27). This led me to what I believe to be the premise for this book: What would happen if life were dictated by a bureaucratic system that utterly lacked compassion and humanity?
Linus is introduced as I have stated earlier, as a by the book kind of guy. His entire life is turned around when he is chosen for a classified assignment. He meets with Extremely Upper Management who plan to uproot his life as he has come to know if for one month, while he stays on Marsyas Island to decide upon the fate of an orphanage. He begins the long journey there the next day, with few belongings and his cat, Calliope. WHat he finds when he gets there, though, changes his life. He meets six children, an island sprite, and the master of the orphanage. The first child he meets, Talia, a garden gnome, the second, Theodore, a wyvern, the third, Sal, a pomeranian/boy, the fourth, Chauncey, a creature that no one can really pin down (though I imagine him as the book describes a green blob with two eyes on sticks coming out of his head), the fifth, Phee, a sprite, and lastly, Lucy, the literal antichrist. He begins to lose sight of the rules and how things are supposed to be as he gets to know the children and the two others on the island. Linus decides he will fight for the orphanage to stay open, regardless of what Extremely Upper Management was trying to make him do.
Along the way, Linus finds out that the village is paid off to deal with the magical creatures living nearby. He is appalled that people would be so concerned with children, whether they are magical or not. Though a few altercations break out between Arthur and Linus and eventually the village and Linus, it all comes to a happy conclusion. The orphanage is allowed to stay open due to Linus’ bravery to confront Extremely Upper Management, and the village becomes more tolerable, and some of its inhabitants even begin to love the children on the island. Linus, who left to make sure all of the reports went through and to fight for the children on the island’s rights to stay there, returns to the island to live out the rest of his life with his new family.
Inside of this heart warming plot, lays two important ideas proposed by McKee; the controlling and counter ideas of the story. McKee describes the controlling idea as “one coherent sentence that expresses a story’s irreducible meaning,” (115). Based on the plot I have described above, this is what I believe to be the controlling idea of this book: An individual willing to explore further in direct opposition to the corrupt bureaucratic system will cause them to experience a happy and fulfilled life. Because Linus decides to break from the rules he so rigidly followed before, he can stand for something he believes in and live a life he is deserving of.
As for the counter idea, I believe it is something like this: Subordination and dominating ways of thinking leads to a person’s unhappiness and solitude. This is evident to me because of the way Linus Baker was characterized in the beginning of the book. He did not have any friends at work, he did not have a spouse, and he did not get along with his neighbor. He wanted to live a simple and boring life, because he felt that he was doing the right thing by following the rules, even though they sometimes felt wrong to him. It is only when he began to question the rules and why they were the way they were, that he became unsatisfied with his job and his lonely way of life.
Ultimately, we see that the controlling idea wins over in this book, as Linus breaks free from the grasp the government has over him and pushes for change in the system that governs magical beings. This book exceeded all of my expectations. I was filled with an array of emotions as I read this book. Beginning to end, this story is one I will never forget.
All You Read is Love 
Angela, I fully agree with your interpretation of the premise, controlling idea and counter idea. There may be a few more moments you could add to your narrative graph though. One moment that stuck out to me as very important was when Talia befriends Helen in the gardening store. It felt like a clear victory for “good” and seemed to help Linus realize that not all the people of the adjacent town were evil and out to harm the children. I think it helped give him more faith in humanity and their willingness to accept the children. Truthfully I think an entire graph could be done for that trip: Talia and Lucy scare Helen (-); Talia wins over Helen with her knowledge (+); Linus pays for Talia’s tools, making her emotional (+); Lucy meets a kind man at the record store (+); Linus reacts to Lucy being in danger by busting down the door (+); Lucy threw a man who tried to exorcise him against a wall (-); The man lived and was fired (+); Talia has a kind moment with a small child (+); The child’s mother drags her away and spits at Talia (-); Talia is optimistic about the children of the future (+). I could go on until the end of the trip, but I do think it’s worth mentioning how the reactions of Helen and the other citizens who didn’t despise the children helped Linus realize that the system not only needed to change, but was ready to change. It seemed like a clear turning point for Linus and his relationships with the children of the home as well and established Helen as a force for good. I loved this book so much I am so glad we read this!
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Great blog post, Angela! Your premise, controlling idea, and counter idea are spot on. I think you could bolster your paragraph on the premise by adding more details on why DICOMY lacks compassion and humanity. Perhaps you could touch on the cold, clinical atmosphere he faces at work–where people can be fired just for having a stain on their shirt–or how afraid of DICOMY the master of the first orphanage is. There are a lot of good quotes about DICOMY’s atmosphere on page 20; “The only times Linus could say he’d ever believe Gunther’s smile were when he’d perform surprise inspections, long pencil scratching against the clipboard, marking demerit after demerit. . . . There were large cameras hanging from the ceiling recording everything (Klune, 20).” You might also substitute a different quote for the one about his uninteresting life–maybe something showing how lonely and uninteresting it really is.
I also think it would be lovely to include a quote at the end–“Sometimes, he thought to himself in a house in a cerulean sea, you were able to choose the life you wanted. And if you were of the lucky sort, sometimes that life chose you back (Klune, 396). I’m so glad you chose this book for us–it was such a wonderful story and I loved reading it!
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I loved your premise of this story, as it reminds me of the world we live in today. There is a point that I would like to make, though, about what the “reading for” aspect is for this narrative. Personally, I was reading for a happy ending, both for the kids and Linus’ love life. It would definitely be worth mentioning the buildup of Linus and Arthur’s relationship as they navigated the corrupt system together. I was reading for them to finally be together as a couple, which as a queer kid is an important part of a novel that implies these kinds of things. I, along with other members of the LGBTQ+ community, have been subjected to queerbaiting and gay characters being killed off for plot advancement so many times, and a wholesome story like this with a canon gay protagonist who gets a healthy relationship with someone he loves is like a breath of fresh air. We read stories like these to feel a sense of inclusion and security.
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