The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

A six-year-old labeled the Antichrist shouldn’t be the character who makes you rethink your own snap judgments, but that’s exactly where TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea hits hardest. We’re talking cozy fantasy, sure, but we’re also talking about the stories societies tell themselves when fear becomes policy and “protection” starts to look a lot like control.

We walk through Linus Baker’s rigid, rain-soaked life as a caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Children, then follow him to Marsyas Island where found family, tenderness, and stubborn joy challenge everything he’s been trained to believe. Along the way, we dig into what the novel does so well: character-driven writing, sharp contrasts between the gray city and the technicolor island, and an allegorical lens that makes exclusion feel uncomfortably familiar.

We also address the controversy around the book’s stated inspiration and why that conversation matters, even if you ultimately read the story as a broader parable about othering. Then we get into the kids and what each one reveals about stigma, disability, trauma, and the hunger to be seen as fully human, not as a category. Finally, we savor the slow-burn queer romance between Linus and Arthur, a love story that feels natural because it’s built on care, patience, and choice.

If you liked this deep dive, subscribe for more literary analysis and book podcast discussions, share the episode with a friend who needs a hopeful read, and leave us a review so more readers can find the show. What part of the story stayed with you the longest?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Welcome back. Today we're diving into TJ Clunes The House in the Cerulean Sea, a novel that has been embraced as a comforting fantasy, celebrated as a queer love story, criticized by some for its optimism, and treasured by countless readers who see themselves somewhere within its pages. On its face, it's a story about magical children hidden away on an island, a lonely, meticulous caseworker, a mysterious headmaster, an orphanage unlike any other. But beneath the whimsical charm lies a familiar question that echoes throughout history. Who gets to belong? Who decides which people are dangerous? Who decides who deserves to be hidden away? Who benefits when fear replaces understanding? The children of

Belonging Fear And Acceptance

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Marcius Island are labeled as threats long before anyone bothers to know them. Their identities become accusations, their existence becomes political, and perhaps that's the most uncomfortable realization of all. Not because the children are magical, but because history is filled with examples of societies deciding that sun groups are simply too different to trust. Of course, it's impossible to discuss the novel without discussing its LGBTQ plus themes. Linus and Arthur's relationship sits at the heart of the story, but it's only one piece of a much larger conversation about identity, authenticity, and what it means to live openly in a world that often demands conformity before acceptance. Is this novel primarily about queer identity? Or is queerness one lens through which Clun explores the universal experience of being labeled other? Can a story rooted in one community speak powerfully to many different forms of exclusion? And perhaps the most important question, is tolerance enough or is genuine acceptance something altogether different? Throughout today's discussion, we'll explore discrimination and inclusion, bureaucracy versus compassion, fear versus curiosity, chosen family, and the remarkable power of seeing individuals instead of categories. Because maybe the real magic in the house in the Cerulean Sea isn't found in Sprites, Wyvern's, or the Antichrist. Maybe it's found in the radical act of looking at another human being and saying, I see you, not the label someone else gave you. So grab your cup of tea, find your way to Marcius Island, and join us as we ask whether the most dangerous thing in this novel is magic or the stories societies tell themselves about the people they fear. Okay, Peter, you know I loved this book. It is now your task to give us a synopsis.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

So Linus Baker is a caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Children or Dykamy. And it's his job to go to these orphanages where these magical children are being housed when incidents occur and do an investigation and make sure that the children are not in a dangerous environment, that they are not a danger to each other, they're not a danger to themselves, or they're not in danger, a danger to the outside world. And we get a little taste of his job right in the very beginning, where he's investigating this incident that occurred at one of these orphanages. And we get to know his personality right away. He cares for these children. He feels as though what he is

Synopsis Of Linus Baker’s Job

SPEAKER_00 4:30

doing is important. However, he is very much about the regulations. He's about being detached and making sure that he doesn't cross any kind of emotional lines and become emotionally invested and non-objective. And so he does his investigation. Then we go back to his job where he is in this cubicle environment, and right away we get this oppressive sort of image of his workspace. The manager and co-manager have all of these regulations that they make all their employees follow and they give them demerits if they violate them. And they just love to walk around and find violations of the regulations. And, you know, you have a stain on your shirt, you have a picture at your desk, things like that. And the entire world that Linus lives in is very oppressive. It's always raining. Everybody is kind of walking on eggshells. He has basically no freedoms. It feels very fascist in a way. The manager approaches him and tells him that he has been summoned to appear before extreme upper management. And I love this scene because he goes into this dark room where all these people are sitting in a circle above him and they're in the dark and he can't see them, and a light shines on them when they begin speaking. But it's like he's being judged. And they interview him and they have a lot of questions to ask about his reports and how he feels about his reports. And what it turns out they're getting at is they're basically trying to decide if he is objective enough to be sent to this top secret orphanage on Marcius Island where very, very, very special, possibly dangerous children are being cared for. And most importantly, to make sure that the caretaker, Arthur Parnassus, is doing his job and following appropriate behaviors. And so they like what they hear from Arthur, and he gets sent out there to basically learn what's going on at this very special orphanage of Arthur Parnassus. And I don't want to say too much about the secrets that are held there because those are nice surprises. But I think we're good with that synopsis, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:40

That sounds great. I think the characters are from my favorite part as we get into the copile, my favorite part of this book because the characters are so nuanced. And I think, as I said in my introduction, that this book is so loved because everyone can find themselves somewhere in this book. The nuances and the well-developed three-dimensional characters of the children, they were so recognizable. And the emotions and the sadness, the happiness, the fear, the imagination, the reactions, all of those things, everything was so very human. I felt it in my soul. I wanted to climb into the book and hug the kids. I wanted to hug Linus. I wanted to hug Arthur. I wanted to talk to them. I wanted to sit down and have coffee with them. I wanted to go on their next adventure.

Why The Characters Feel Real

SPEAKER_01 7:32

Like they were just really awesome characters to me.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

The novel benefits from this isolated location, and it gives us the opportunity to explore character development, and it's a very small group of characters. And so we're there, we're in this scene. It's not a huge world that we're exploring, so it's all about character development. That goes on to atmosphere because there are basically just two different atmospheres in this book. There is Arthur's atmosphere where he lives in the city, which is very dark and oppressive and depressing and controlling. And then there is Marcius Island, which is like stepping into Oz almost. You know, he's in black and white in the city, and then suddenly he's in Technicolor. There's a very huge contrast.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

And I think that's symbolic in many ways.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Yeah, I always tell my students in literature to look for the contrasts, and you're gonna find the theme of the book, and you're gonna find this inherent meaning that exists. And I think there's a very deliberate contrast and pairing and juxtaposition of these two atmospheres together. So that takes us to writing style. I love his writing style. I really enjoyed the character development. The dialogue is really strong back and forth, the clear tone of the different characters. I thought that was brilliant because it's not just developing characters and describing them, but it's in developing a voice for each character. And I felt like in the dialogue, each character had a very distinct voice in the way they were written. And I really enjoyed that. And the fact that you just said this is gray and in black and white, and this is in technicolor, that comes through in the writing as well. It is very clear Linus' life and the way it's described and the way it's visually set up for the reader, and then the absolute contrast to Arthur's life and the life that Linus comes into.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

Yeah. And everybody in this city, as far as character

Contrast Between City And Island

SPEAKER_00 9:28

goes, are just really mean and rude and detached from one another and very judgmental. Even his next door neighbor is just horrible, and she insinuates that she's hoping he's sick and going to die so that she can get a new neighbor.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:41

And then he drives into this small town life that's alive and actually thriving. And, you know, I thought that was really cool.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

The symbolism is so deep in this, it's almost allegorical.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

Yes. The plot is exactly what I said. It is Linus needs to go to Marcius Island to discover what's going on with this orphanage and then decide whether or not to recommend it get shut down or not. And that's the story.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Right. And so the conflict really comes down to the situation with his job and what he's being asked to do, and then what he finds on the island and what he gets to know and see behind the scenes and kind of reconcile those two things.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Yes. And the intrigue comes from okay, what decision is he going to make? What is going on? What's the big secret of Marcius Island? And also what's going on in the town between these magical children and this town that's sort of they're separated, they're adjacent to, you have to take a ferry over to the island, but the town and their sort of prejudice and fear of what's going on at the orphanage and how they're going to react and treat the children.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Right. And the town, intrigue-wise, is just set up as a microcosm of the larger society. Because in the very dealing with this dicamy that is supposed to protect magical youth, it also is just an inherent form of prejudice.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Right. It is essentially their orphanages are essentially just reservations for magical people.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

That's correct. And then there is no adoption going on here.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Right. And then when they become too old, they basically go into another kind of controlled environment as well, and a new department takes over their life.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

So the logic to it, it is logical on a fantastic scale. It is logical. It is log logical just from the imagination and storytelling point of view, but it's also very logical from the real life point of view because it very much parallels real world issues.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Yeah, and there are some serendipitous things that happen along the way that are so it's good that happened, but that is a little unbelievable. However, that is inherent in cozy fantasy. And I think that people who criticize this for just being too saccharine sweet or, you know, lighthearted or whatever, I don't think they understand the genre that they're reading. Right. Because this is cozy fantasy. This is about self-discovery, found family, a little bit of romance, and some animal companions. It's got all those elements.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Right. And I will go back to the fact that it's so symbolic, it's almost allegorical. And in that kind of story, you're going to have those things happen because there are symbols of good and there are symbols of evil and there are symbols of intervention.

Cozy Fantasy And Allegory Rules

SPEAKER_01 12:22

And so those serendipitous things are going to happen because there is a moral lesson being communicated in the story. And that is supreme to say this challenging writing that might avoid those serendipitous moments.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

And yeah, and that's the attitude you need to take into reading it. It's an allegory, it's a fairy tale.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Sit back and enjoy yourself.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

That's correct. And on that level, enjoyment. Absolutely. I really couldn't put this book down. There are times when we go to read books where I have to put things down, and you know, and I Peter will say, Are you done yet? And I'm like, okay, I've had 15 other things going on. Now it was fortunate when I was reading this that I was traveling, but I literally like, I was like, don't bother me. Like I'm sitting here on the plane and I'm reading. And then I got settled in my hotel room in Cincinnati before I started reading essays. And I like stayed up way too late sitting under a lamp in the hotel room and reading the rest of the book because I could not stop. And I didn't want to listen to the audio. I wanted to read the book because I was going to absorb it faster that way than listening to someone else read it to me. So I was really invested in reading this and thoroughly enjoyed it. I wanted to just start reading it again as soon as I was done. So excellent, excellent. So now we're going to move into that spoiler portion. And I'm excited about it because I've got so much to say about the things that happened and the characters. But if you haven't read this book, you really need to read it, and then you need to listen to our discussion on the flip side. Okay, quick pause. Because if you're still listening, you clearly have excellent taste or questionable judgment. Either way, we've got something for you.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

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SPEAKER_01 14:18

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Spoiler Line And Merch Break

SPEAKER_00 14:25

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SPEAKER_01 14:31

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SPEAKER_00 14:43

Okay, right out the gate, I think we need to address a little bit of controversy surrounding this story and put it out there for people to make their own judgments. TJ Clun in an interview told the interviewer that his primary inspiration for The House in the Cerulean Sea was learning about the 60s scoop and the indigenous residential schools in Canada. The 60s scoop was Canada's policy of rounding up indigenous children and putting them in these schools where there were a lot of tragedies, a lot of abusive. It was just a very bad environment in most cases.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

And so he is accused, therefore, of taking this incredibly dark and tragic piece of indigenous history and writing this sacrum sweet, lighthearted fantasy that glosses over a lot of those abuses. They are there. It's very clear

Controversy Over Real World Inspiration

SPEAKER_00 15:33

that some of these orphanages are bad places and bad things happen to the children there. And Linus has rightfully shut them down. But we don't really address it in the main story. The main story is simply cozy fantasy. And so the accusation is that, and also a cultural appropriation of an event that this cis white man should not be commenting on and potentially perpetuating a white savior complex.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Okay, so all of that is there. Now, Liz, your take.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Inspiration is inspiration. I don't think he is writing an allegory about indigenous peoples and the 60s scoop and everything that was going on in Canada. I really do believe we have an allegorical approach to exclusion of others, the concept of othering. I see what he's saying with my inspiration initially was when I heard about this, but if you read the book, I don't think you can read it as that's what he's talking about in the book. And there are some key reasons for that. Because of the nature of the children, which I think we're going to talk about, and the specific way in it which each child is written. I think each child in some way represents a different type of other that exists in the world. So while he was inspired by these things that have taken place in the world, it is clear that he is writing a story about multiple groups that are excluded. And he is using the idea of these quote-unquote orphanages and schools that have been created to shove these different children into them and kind of make these different children disappear. So I think that is the only level on which we had inspiration from indigenous people that these schools were created. Because once you read the book and you start looking at the way he has targeted the conversation, and like I said, this very symbolic and allegorical approach, it is not targeted to describe the indigenous experience from that point, other than he may have been inspired by the school creation.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Yeah, I can see the inspiration, but I think if there had been more direct parallels, we might be more problematic. Right. Like if we were really dealing with an the isolation of these indigenous persons, but that's not what's going on here. No. Yeah, like you said, I think he's just addressing the uh the broader problem and the abuses that go with othering any group at all within our society and making a monster out of them, essentially.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

And so I'm not trying to like completely, you know, discount the outrage or the offense that was there. And it may have been an unwise choice to say this was my inspiration without more context. But really, if you read the book with an open mind and you're really looking at the book as it is and taking it in, if he had never said that, you would have never picked up on that. You know what I mean? Like you would not have said, oh, he's trying to write about indigenous peoples. That's not, this is clearly a book about exclusion. It's clearly a book about a multitude of groups that have been excluded. It can clearly be applied in so many ways. It's kind of like Animal Farm. It may have been inspired by the Russian Revolution, but how many different ways can that book be applied? And in that case, Orwell more deliberately made that look like that. And this is not the case in this book.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

The same kind of evils exist the world over and throughout history, and they show up all the time with different faces. So this is the certain type of evil with a different face.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Correct. So let's just go ahead and talk about some of the kids that exist in here that Linus finds when he goes to Marcius Island and he is told to basically watch Arthur, the headmaster, because that's really what this is about. The extremely upper management want him to go inspect this orphanage, but indirectly it is kind of insinuated that we also want you to specifically look at the qualifications of the headmaster, Arthur Parnassus. What's he doing? How are things really going in this orphanage under his leadership? And then what are these children engaging in? Like, are they safe? And there's one child in particular that is of huge concern, and that is Lucy. Lucy, a six-year-old boy, and Lucy is short for Lucifer.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Because he's the son

Lucy And The Power Of Labels

SPEAKER_00 20:04

of the devil, supposedly.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

And in that vein, he is the Antichrist. And Extremely Upper Management is very concerned about the extreme power he has, and that this six-year-old is the Antichrist and could bring about the destruction of the world.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

And he's a six-year-old boy.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

And let's just say their concern comes from not enough going wrong at the orphanage, not things going wrong at the orphanage. They don't believe that Arthur could have the situation under such control because they've got extreme prejudices against this children, these children, especially Lucy.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

Right. And right away, I would venture to guess that if you're listening to this and you've not read the book, or maybe even if you did read the book, Antichrist is a triggering word, right? I mean, in our culture, you say he's the son of the devil, okay, evil, right? And then you say the antichrist, and that has its own triggers because those are very serious labels. But then TJ Clun presents you with a six-year-old boy with a mop of hair who has bad dreams at night and has this intense imagination. And when he does say dark and scary things, he's doing it to joke with you because he knows what people say about him. And he's just a baby. He's just a boy. And I think that DJ Clun automatically challenges us with this idea of how we view people and we demonize people. And he starts with a very shocking image in the idea of Lucy.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

And also how we view people who have behavioral issues. Correct. Who have anger issues, depression, or mental illness, you know, like schizophrenia or whatever. Any way in which we can say, oh, that person's awesome dangerous. Yeah, they're evil. They're they've got some sort of wrongness or bad, inherent badness about them.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

And so that's definitely there too. But I think it's also, it can also just be as simple as we label someone by a word that's become triggering with a word that's become triggering, and you know we do it. I mean, he's a socialist.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Or they're maggots, right?

SPEAKER_01 22:12

They're maggots, or democrats.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Yeah, democrats, yeah. Yeah, okay, so or people who do these things are possessed of demons.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

That gets thrown around a lot too.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

What there was a pastor in Texas that just said anyone who flies, any church that flies or displays the pride flag, that the police should go in and depose and dispose of the pastors and then auction off the churches to reel the properties and the churches to reel pastors who did the right thing because those pastors are wolves. They're not people, they're wolves out to devour our children.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

And no matter what side of any particular group or issue you might be talking about, you might be on, it's problematic. Demonizing language is always problematic.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

When you dehumanize people, then you are more likely to justify harm to them.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Correct. And so automatically you take the six-year-old little boy. Now, if I am a group of extremely upper management, or I'm just a group in the town across the water from this island, and I know that the Antichrist is living 10 miles from me. Am I concerned? Yes. Right? I've got children of my own at home, and someone tells me, Do you know the Antichrist is living on that island over there? And that's all I know? That label is scary.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Because when all you know is the label and not the actual person, then you can think whatever you horrible things about them that you want to in your imagination. You live in fear.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

Correct. So Linus gets a folder and he finds out the Antichrist is living at this orphanage, and he's like, What am I walking into?

SPEAKER_00 23:54

The very first thing he does is faint dead.

unknown 23:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

It's like, what am I? What is happening? And then he meets Lucy. And Lucy is literally just a six-year-old boy.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

With incredible powers, who says a lot of really dark troubling things. But at the same time, it's it's it's who he thinks he needs to be versus who he really is. And there's a dichotomy that he wrestles with is are you the sum of people's expectations about you or what you've been told? Or can you be anything you want?

SPEAKER_01 24:29

Right. And he talks about at night when he has his nightmares that there are spiders in his head, and he wants the spiders to go away. And I think the first night when Linus wakes up, he comes into the house and he sees that Arthur is trying to calm Lucy down from nightmares, and Lucy's crying because of the spiders in his head. And Linus sees that, and then Linus comforts Lucy and sits there and becomes part of this moment of him simply being a child who's scared. I think it's such a heart-wrenching moment and such a revealing moment to sit there and see: no, this is not a threatening child. This is just a child who is terrified of what he could be and wants to be this. He wants to go on adventures. He wants to play with the other kids. He wants to have fun. And there are spiders in his head. You know, who put those there? How much of it is the fault of people who told him what he had to be?

SPEAKER_00 25:27

And it's not like he had a choice of who his father was. Who his father was. Yeah. One of the very first things that happens when Linus gets to the island is he meets Zoe, who is a sprite and spirit of the island, and she drives him there. And right away you get that there's a bit of prejudice towards him, too. Right. On her. Because he's the enemy. He's the person that's coming to the room. Come from Dietamy. Yeah, to shut down the island. And so there's an interesting relationship there that develops. When he gets to the island, he's brought his only companion in the world, his cat, who immediately jumps out of her carrier and runs away. And when Linus is chasing her, he chases her into the garden and he meets one of the children. And the first child that he meets is a garden gnome named Talia.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

Right. And the cat's name is Calliope, which I love. I love that name. She's a black cat named Calliope. So Calliope

Talia Theodore Chauncey Fee And Sal

SPEAKER_01 26:22

intuitively, she hates home where Linus and her live on a regular basis, but she intuitively jumps out and runs straight into the garden because she thinks it's awesome. Talia, like you said, a garden gnome, is obsessed with her garden and is sitting there going through the garden and just looking at all the plants and and wants to inspect Linus. She threatens to bury him in the garden more than one time, as I recall, which is just funny. But the most important thing to her are her plants. And you and I picked up on the same vibe from Talia.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

Yeah, two of the things that are commented more than anything are her physical appearance because she's very short and um she's a girl and she has a beard. So she's unusual looking, but also she is basically single-minded. She has a single-minded obsession about the garden, and that's her whole life. And when somebody has obsessive behaviors about one thing and they just proseferate, what do you think about?

SPEAKER_01 27:20

I think about autism.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

Right. And since I have a son who's autistic, like when I was reading Talia, that is the first thing I thought about. I was like, this is an autistic garden gnome. But I think representing people that think in a very specific way and may look different than people are expecting them to be. And clearly, of course, you have kind of the gender-bending thing that's potentially going on with her there too, as she has a beard and but she is a female gnome, you know, and we've got those things going on as well. So there's a lot of different things, but I definitely picked up on the autism right away because of her single-minded focus. And we see that even more when Linus later on buys her a set of garden tools because Linus absolutely falls in love with these children. Against his against his better judgment. And he buys her garden tools, and she literally plops herself down in the middle of the store and sits there, and she starts just basking in the glory of her garden tools and you know, stroking them and looking at them and and counting them and looking at every part of them. And this is gonna do this, and this is gonna do this, and this and and you just really feel that how strongly she is determined and focused on this one task.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Another clue is also just how she has no filter.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

No filter.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

Yes, she says anything.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Like I'm deciding whether I'm gonna kill you and bury you right now.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

Exactly. So I think it's a very clear what she represents.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

Yes. What's another one of your favorite characters?

SPEAKER_00 28:51

I love Theodore.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

I love Theodore too.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

Theodore is a wyvern or wyvern, however you like to say it.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

Yeah. I say wyvern.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

He obviously doesn't speak the same language as anybody in the orphanage. And Linus's initial prejudice towards him, of course, is that he's maybe not that intelligent. He's just an animal. But he is actually very intelligent, and he has his own language, and he is mystified by the fact that everybody seems to understand Theodore but him. And I really liked the development of him slowly but surely kind of. Okay, now I get it. I it is strange. He does have his own kind of language.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

I can pick up on what he's putting down, his eyes, the way he moves, his sounds, his everything, you know, like even though he's technically not verbal in the traditional way I think of being verbal, he is communicating to me.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Right. And one of the tragedies about uh the wyverns is that they have been almost hunted to extinction. So he is unique in the fact that he is one of the last of his kind. And so he's sort of at the orphanage for his own protection from other people, outside people. And like we said, he's nonverbal. And uh, the idea of how either nonverbal or a language barrier in general, sometimes that causes that kind of prejudice about intelligence.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

Right. And when we can't understand someone, you know, automatically dismissing them in that way. And Theodore breaks my heart. Like I cried so many times in this book. I don't know if you cried or not, but I definitely cried in this book. And one of the moments was, of course, from the very beginning when Linus gets there, at one point he loses a button off his jacket. Does he and Theodore gets the button and it's he lets Theodore have the button, and Theodore takes the button, and Theodore is absolutely thrilled with the shininess of the button.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

Because he has a horde under the couch.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

Yes, he has a horde under the couch, but Linus doesn't really know about his horde under the couch originally, and then it becomes a thing that Linus gives him buttons periodically. And so Linus will give him, and each time Linus gives him a button, it's like he's given him the greatest treasure ever. And then later on in the novel, Theodore gets Linus to come with him so he can show Linus the horde of stuff under the couch. And Linus sees that Theodore has made a nest of these buttons, and he just burrows down in the nest and sits there and looks so happy and so loved and looks at the buttons and looks at Linus and looks at the buttons and looks at Linus. And that love and that trust and that gratitude that's expressed in that moment, it just, oh, I could start crying right now. It just was so beautiful. It's just a beautiful moment. But it is that love and understanding and that passing of understanding and intelligence and emotion and humanity that happens in that moment.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

Linus tries so hard to pretend like he could harden his heart and stay cannot and stay distanced from the children and you know, and and not develop emotion about them. But it's not his nature.

SPEAKER_01 32:01

No, it's not.

SPEAKER_00 32:02

He just he gives into kindness by default at all times, and and you get that he just he cannot stop caring.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

And he there are many, many little acts of kindness, like buying the tools as well as giving the button that just start to show you who he really is.

SPEAKER_01 32:19

Right. And he is really a beautiful person. That's something he has to discover throughout the book about himself. That's that's something that he has to come to realize. One of my other favorite characters, my favorite, favorite character I'm gonna save um for a second. One of my other favorite characters is Chauncey. And Chauncey is probably the the most unusual looking character. I mean, clearly a wyvern's little dragon-looking thing. And so, you know, that's that's unusual. But Chauncey, they don't know what he is. He's like a green blob with these eye stalks sticking up. He's a very odd-looking little creature, and he wants more than anything in the world to be a bell hop.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

Yeah. And his story is so, so sad. I mean, they've all got sad stories. They've all got sad stories. One of the things about him is that he has been told his entire life that he is a monster and that he is the thing that hides under your bed. And so he started to hide under beds to surprise people because he thought that was his role. That's what he was supposed to do. And so when he sees this movie, I guess, about bellhops or a documentary or something like that, he just becomes obsessed at the idea. That's what I want to do. That's the person I want to be. I want to be somebody who helps people for a living.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

And I greet people and I take their bags and they're happy and they they feel like I've done something for them. I don't want to jump out from underneath the bed. But Arthur warns Linus that first night, Chauncey may end up under your bed because he's still trying to break that habit, that ingrained image of himself. But Chauncey right away wants to take Linus's bags. Can I help you, sir? And Linus like tips him right up front because he like asks because bell hops get tips, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:04

And so And it's his very first tip.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

It is his tip, very first tip ever. He's like, Oh, I got a tip, you know, and so it becomes a thing. But he just so much wants to redefine who he is and have people smile when they see him instead of being scared.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

And it's commented many times throughout the book is do you think he'll ever be able to achieve that dream? Is it cruel to make him think he can be something that he probably will never be? And society's attitude towards people that look like him and how that limits his prospects and sort of the tragedy behind that. And I think that's a very real, that's a very real struggle.

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Right. And I think that you deal with people with special needs, people who have limitations physically, who have disabilities or any of those things. And the question is, can I integrate into normal society? Can I have a job? Can I function on my own? Will people accept me the way I look, the way I talk, the way I operate? Can I find a purpose that is not just people wanting to look the other direction when I walk down the road? I think that that is very much in Chauncey's experience. And I think that we see that with him. So yeah, that's going on with Chauncey and I love Chauncey. He just really more than anything wants to inspire people with goodness instead of inspiring their fear. Then we have Fee.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Yes, who is the other Sprite on the island, and she is a Earth Sprite. I think Zoe is a water sprite, correct?

SPEAKER_01 35:42

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

And Fee is the Earth Sprite, and she is sort of under Zoe's tutelage. Yes, mentorship and controlling her powers, and she is unusually powerful at a young age for a wood sprite, so or for a sprite. And so that is kind of why they see that she's a danger as well.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Right. And so she needs that mothering that Zoe's providing her, and then she needs to be there to care for the forests. They're kind of like the natural caretakers of the island. And they're the most, if there are indigenous people on this island, it's the sprites because Zoe lived on that island before anyone came. And so when Arthur came and there was when the orphanage was established on the island, Zoe was already there. Sprites lived for hundreds of years, and she was there, and then Fee is there now, and so they are like the caretakers of the island.

SPEAKER_00 36:34

So there you have indigenous exclusion, right? Uh uh exclusions of indigenous persons. But also you have another kind of otherness, which is exceptionalism.

SPEAKER_01 36:42

Right. They are exceptional and gifted and powerful and therefore feared. My favorite character is Sal. And Sal is gonna have to take us over to the town as well, because I want to incorporate the conversation about the town, which is across the water from the orphanage. Sal is a larger young man who has come to the orphanage after being at other orphanages. And what happens with him is that when he gets very, very afraid, he turns into this little Pomeranian puppy, right? And what had happened at the other orphanage that got him kicked out? Do you remember? He bit someone.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

Yes. Yeah, uh, the cook slapped him and he turned into the dog and bit her.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

Right. And she was being cruel at the other orphanage, and she he wanted to help. He was trying to do something, and she slapped him and and he turned into a dog, and it was his fear response was biting her. And so he was sent to Marcius Island basically to disappear because he was dangerous in that way.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

But before that, he had been sent from orphanage, orphanage, foster home to foster home. He just bounced around a lot.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

Right, because no one really wanted to deal with him, and so he's very scared and very shy, but he loves to write and he writes beautiful poetry and beautiful stories, and just he expresses himself through words, even though he has trouble expressing himself verbally all the time. And Theodore likes to land on Sal and Chauncey often moves around him and stuff like that. Sal loves the other kids, but he is worried that he is going to bite someone or hurt someone, and he's also just terrified of other people.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

And he loves Calliope too.

SPEAKER_01 38:36

He loves the cat. Yeah, Calliope loves him.

unknown 38:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:40

If there's one person that Calliope is attracted to, it's Sal, and she's like all up in his face and purring around him. And even though he turns into a Pomeranian, you know, she's all up in his space and purring around him and trying to make him feel good. So in another really heartfelt moment, Linus is trying to get to know each of the kids to find out how they're doing on Marcius Island. And Linus goes up to Sal's room and finds that Sal has a typewriter, but he's kind of hidden it away in the closet. And when he goes to like try to write or type, he like hides away in the closet to do it. And Linus says, You know what? You should move this over to the window. And you should be sitting at the window and you should be doing this out in the open. And everyone should share in the joy of what you're doing. You you that you should take joy in doing this.

SPEAKER_00 39:30

But he does it in a very, very sensitive way. And in that he says, if you're not ready, that's okay. It's okay to want to feel small sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

Right.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

But if you are ready to take this step, I I think you'd love the view, and it might inspire your writing.

SPEAKER_01 39:47

And before you know it, Sal does move his typewriter over to the window and sits there and starts typing. And Arthur hears Sal typing at the window and he realizes that Linus has had this effect, and it's just one of those kind of beautiful moments that happens.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

And this is a very long journey that we were on.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Oh, very long journey.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

Sal is deeply, deeply traumatized. Traumatized.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

And it takes forever to trust Linus. As a matter of fact, so it's part of Linus' investigation that he needs to see their space, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

And Linus is very patient because he's good at his job.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:19

But Sal is the very last room that he's invited in. Right. That's after a long time of warming up to Linus. Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:27

And after Linus reads some of his words and like compliments him on those, and it like really takes building trust with him. Yeah. So eventually, Linus has made this suggestion that the kids not be kept on Marcius Island all the time, that children need to be able to get out and experience more. So he kind of gets Arthur to make the decision that they're going to go visit the town. And that's a whole experience. One of the things that comes up over and over again with Linus as he is going around is that there are these posters that the government has put up that say, see something, say something. And it's related to magical people. See something, say something. And they're almost like these report your neighbor posters, right? And so you know this is a society steeped in prejudice. And these magical children come over. And he takes Lucy to the record store because in one of his nightmarish moments, Lucy broke some of his favorite records. And so he takes Lucy to the record store to buy records. You know, he takes Talia to the garden store to buy garden equipment. And they make inroads with some people. And then they have conflicts with some people.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

Yeah, that when they're in the record store, you know, the main

Trip To Town Meets Prejudice

SPEAKER_00 41:43

manager of the record store is Chill. Like he's kind of a pothead, I think.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

Yeah, he's a pothead and he loves Lucy. He's like, chill, little dude, you know.

SPEAKER_00 41:49

Yeah, you got a great vibe. What good? Oh, you like the old stuff, huh? You know? And then there's this quiet other employee there that doesn't say anything until Lucy goes into the back room and then he pulls a crucifix on him and tries to exercise him. Lucy instinctively uses his powers to throw him against the wall and knock him out.

SPEAKER_01 42:09

Right. Because it's a defensive mechanism at that point. But there are the and there's these people in the street that like Talia walks up to the window to say hi to a little girl and waves at her, and the little girl walks up and waves at her, and then the mother sees the little girl waving at the gnome in the window and grabs her and says, get away from there. Don't wave at that dirty, you know, whatever it is, and grabs her away. And Talia's like, I don't know what I did. She was a nice little girl, you know. I was just smiling at her, you know. And so there's a lot of those moments that are heartbreaking because we know they're gonna happen because they happen in society all the time. So when the suggestion was made that they went to the town, I as a reader already knew what was going to happen because you know those people are going to be there.

SPEAKER_00 42:53

But I'm glad everybody wasn't a caricature of prejudice and racism and violence because there were good people. There were beautiful people everywhere. That's correct. And one of the serendipitous moments is the garden store where they end up befriending, or Talia really ends up befriending the owner, who also happens to be the town mayor.

SPEAKER_01 43:11

Correct. And so she Talia looks at the garden store owner and says, You should come see my garden, and starts talking to her about it. And she goes, I would love to come to the island to see your garden. You don't know as the reader that that's the mayor yet.

SPEAKER_00 43:25

And the way you find out is because to end their trip to the town, they try to go to the ice cream store. They try to go to the ice cream store, and they're all excited to get their ice cream, and the man refuses to serve them ice cream.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

Right.

SPEAKER_00 43:38

And that's, I mean, I would have had Arthur's reaction. Right. You know, Linus is trying to keep Arthur calm at this moment because Arthur's about to lose his shit on this guy. He won't give his kids ice cream.

SPEAKER_01 43:51

I would have bet Arthur too. Someone would have had to seriously calm me down.

SPEAKER_00 43:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

And Sal has the reaction that Sal would have. He feels threatened and he turns into a Pomeranian right there in the center of the ice cream. And so he disappears into his heap of clothes as this little Pomeranian. Who scoops him up? I think it's can't remember who holds him. It does Linus scoop Sal up and hold him. I really can't remember.

SPEAKER_00 44:17

It's Arthur initially, and then Arthur hands him to Linus.

SPEAKER_01 44:19

Right, hands him to Linus.

SPEAKER_00 44:21

Help him change back.

SPEAKER_01 44:22

Right. So we have this horrible moment where you know it's coming. Sal gets terrified. He changes into a Pomeranian because this man gets really aggressive. And then the garden shop owner, who is the mayor, comes in and tells the man, you will serve ice cream. And he refuses. And she says, Then you can leave because she owns the store.

SPEAKER_00 44:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:44

And so he's she says, Then you can leave and I will serve them ice cream. And in that moment, you find Out that Arthur as a kid used to come to the ice cream store as well, and he has a history in this town, and there's a whole bunch going on there with Arthur. But she serves him ice cream and she acknowledges that she has been delinquent and not reaching out to the children and not reaching out to Arthur. But the beautiful moment is when Arthur has handed Sal to Linus, and Arthur says, Linus, can you take Sal to the bathroom with his clothes and help him get back, transition back? And Linus takes Sal into the bathroom and he comforts him and he kind of coaxes him and he says, It's gonna be okay. Everything's gonna be okay now.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

And eventually Sal is able to turn back into he gives him again, he's great about giving Sal his time. And that's that's his caring of Sal. That's the constant care that he gives him. He's so patient. If you're not ready, it's okay. So he he leaves him with the clothes and he says, But you might want to get some ice cream, right? And then he kind of shuts the door, and then sooner or later, Sal comes out to get his ice cream.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

And he's able to come out and get ice cream, and the mayor makes sure and serves all the kids, and they're all so excited to have the ice cream, and she takes care of them. And there are more confrontations later, and the mayor comes back into play later to take care of Arthur and the kids. But Linus has to be this mediating force with Arthur, and Linus gets angry sometimes too, because his protective nature of the kids comes out.

SPEAKER_00 46:16

But there's something going on with Arthur that's much more dangerous about his anger. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 46:21

Yes. Although we may leave that. Are we gonna leave that? We're gonna leave that. Because that comes into the sequel, by the way. The sequel is somewhere beyond the C, and that goes into a whole different thing with Arthur's story.

SPEAKER_00 46:31

So obviously, we've broken apart the different personalities and the different powers and also challenges that the kids have and how they represent many, many ways of othering people. Correct. And some of them overlap. You know, we've got mental illness, we've got physical disability, we've got behavioral problems, we've got all sorts of things.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

Right. And I do think Sal represents that mental illness and also those unwanted children that are just passed from place to place. Definitely the foster care system.

SPEAKER_00 47:00

What we haven't touched on, though, of course, is also while all this is going on, there's this budding romance between Linus and Arthur.

SPEAKER_01 47:08

Right. And it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 47:09

It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 47:10

And what I love about this is it is so natural in this book. And I am just taken up in it the whole time. TJ Clun builds this beautiful slow roll romance through the entire thing in these beautiful moments of exchanges of glances, of these prolonged looks that it that pass between Arthur and Linus in these very small, tender moments where they're taking care of the kids, and these words that are exchanged, and then finally at the end, you get the you get the moment, right? But it's just this beautiful slow roll romance, and

Queer Romance And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_01 47:50

it's so natural, and it's just like any other beautiful fairy tale romance you might see, but it's between two men. And what I loved was the naturalness of that in this book.

SPEAKER_00 48:01

Yeah, me too. And so uh there we also we have another group of others that oftentimes get demonized and excluded, which is the LGBTQIA community. So you can really apply the hardships and the injustices in this book to a broad variety of situations.

SPEAKER_01 48:21

Right.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

So whatever inspired it, I think you can find yourself somewhere in this story, your own story in a way.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

Right.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

And your own hurt and your own inner pain and your own fear of acceptance.

SPEAKER_01 48:33

And then it shines a mirror on maybe some of our own prejudices and the own ways in which we have othered people, maybe unintentionally, but still it's there. It's hanging out there for us to deal with. All right, on that note, you really do have to read this book if you haven't read it. I hope that's given you some inspiration to read it. There are so many beautiful moments that we have not discussed. We've just given you that overview to run with. You still need to experience the plot. So on that note, Peter, what are we reading next time?

SPEAKER_00 49:02

Well, we are changing the tone of our literature extremely to the extreme. We are going to talk about Lord of the Flies.

SPEAKER_01 49:13

Because Peter has not read it and never read it. He made it through high school without reading it. So we are reading it.

SPEAKER_00 49:20

This is becoming a theme, actually.

SPEAKER_01 49:22

So his education continues.

SPEAKER_00 49:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

So we're talking about Lord of the Flies um by Golding. We are going to get into that. We're going to take it apart. It is about a group of children on an island.

SPEAKER_00 49:34

And it's much less cozy cozy.

SPEAKER_01 49:38

Much less cozy. So until we get back to that joyful story, keep reading.

SPEAKER_00 49:43

Keep thinking.

SPEAKER_01 49:44

And we'll talk to you soon.