"The Boy with The Cuckoo-Clock Heart" (La Mécanique du Cœur in its original language)) is a 2007 French novel written by Matthias Malzieau, well known in France for being the frontman of pop rock band "Dionysos".The book tells the story of Jack, who is born in Edinburgh, Scotland on the "coldest day on earth", which causes him to be born with a frozen heart. Thankfully, the midwife Madeleine grafts a cuckoo-clock in order to help it beat, which allows him to live, but he must follow three rules.
- He must never touch the hands of his heart.
- He must keep his temper under control.
- Most importantly, he must never fall in love.
However, the third rule is put to the test when on his tenth birthday, Jack meets the beautiful little Andalusian singer "Miss Acacia", which causes him to go on a trip to see her again.
In 2013, EuropaCorp released an animated version, which was eventually released the following year in other parts of the world like the United States under the title Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart.
The Boy with The Cuckoo-Clock Heart contains examples of:
- An Aesop: Falling in love always comes with the risk of heartbreak, but even that isn't the end of the world.
- The Bad Guy Wins: While Joe isn't a bad guy, just a Jerkass at worst and a Byronic Hero at best, he eventually ends up marrying Miss Acacia after Jack falls into a coma and is presumed dead.
- Bad Boss: Downplayed with Brigitte Heim. She might act a bit stern towards Jack and might constantly threaten to fire him from his position as the scarer of The Ghost Train ( which she eventually does), but even then, she's completely justified in doing this, as Jack is not particularly good at the job, as people always come out laughing from the ride instead of being scared.
- Break the Cutie: Poor Jack. Over the course of the story, he goes from a chipper, idealistic child into a depressed man.
- Both Sides Have a Point: When Joe and Jack reencounter each other at L'Éxtraourdinarium, Joe reveals that he used to bully precisely because they were both interested in Miss Acacia, something he couldn't stand. Jack correctly points out that that is an outrageous reason to humilliate him everyday at school, yet Joe also points out that pecking his eye out for that was also very extreme on his part; he might have been very cruel to him, but that still didn't warrant Joe losing an eye.
- Cool Old Guy: Despite being an alcoholic, Arthur acts like a parental figure towards Jack and gives him a memory egg on his birthday.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Georges Méliès. He wishes to take his fiancée on a honeymoon to the real moon.
- Deep Sleep: After trying to tear out his heart in a fit of despair, Jack spends years in a coma being cared for by Méliès. The circus uses him as an attraction during this time.
- Delicate and Sickly: Jack's position is a fantastical version. His heart needs the titular clock to keep beating, and overexertion, whether physical or emotional, will wear it out and kill him. At least, that's what Madeleine told Jack. The truth is he only needed the clock as a baby, and his heart was perfectly healthy all along.
- Disproportionate Retribution
- What was Joe's reason for bullying Jack at school? They were both interested in Miss Acacia, and he wasn't really on board with the idea of having something in common with a weird kid. This is Lampshaded by Jack, who points out that it didn't mean he had to bully him because of that.
- However, Joe fires back that Jack pecking his eye out with his Cuckoo-Clock Bird because of this was still a pretty extreme action to do.
- Downer Ending: After revealing to Miss Acacia who he really was after waking up from a coma, she is unsurprisingly angered by the reveal, as she thought Jack was dead and had already moved on from him, going as far as marrying Joe, who she isn't in love with. Because of this, she tells Jack that as far as she's concerned, "he no longer exists", and leaves. In the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, it is revealed that realizing that he has finally lost the love of his life made turned Jack into what is described as "the ghost of his former self", becoming a depressed person and leaving back to his childhood home, who is now tended by Anna and Luna because Madeleine died; there, Arthur reveals to him that he only needed the clock for the first months of his life, but that Madeleine grew so attached to him that she didn't bother to remove it so he would never leave her.
- Fatal Flaw: Jack is very Hot-Blooded and can't help himself from acting on his temper and passion. This causes him to gouge out Joe's eye, and rip out his cuckoo clock.
- Freudian Excuse: When Madeleine was younger, she was pregnant with a baby, but she suffered a miscarriage that rendered her infertile. She is very overprotective of Jack because she sees him as the child she never had and is afraid of losing him too.
- Historical Domain Character: Georges Méliès joins Jack on his quest to Andalusia. He's not yet a filmmaker, so people regard him as a two bit stage magician at best and a quack at worst.
- Induced Hypochondria: Jack's heart had grown strong by the time he was ten, but Madeleine continued to make him wear the clock and abide by the three rules. She believed that, as long as Jack's clock needed her maintenance, she would never have to lose her son.
- Inevitably Broken Rule: Jack goes back on all of Madeleine's rules for maintaining his clock. Breaking rules two and three set the story in motion, but breaking rule one results in Jack falling into a coma for years.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Anna and Luna, who are also described as "thirty-year old kids".
- My Beloved Smother: Deconstructed. During most of his childhood, Madeleine is extremely overprotective of Jack over the three rules; because of this, when Jack is forced to leave Edinburgh, he doesn't know how to handle the fact that Miss Acacia could leave him for Joe, which in turn not only leaves him in a coma for a few years, and after he wakes up and tries to reconnect with Miss Acacia, she immediately rejects him because she feels betrayed by him, and that leads him to become a ghost of his former self in the epilogue.
- Poor Communication Kills:
- Jack doesn't tell Miss Acacia he's the boy from Edinburgh until after she's married to Joe. Feeling betrayed by her first love, she cuts all ties with Jack.
- Madeleine's fib about Jack needing the clock for all his life holds her son back from living his life when he didn't have to.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Joe gives one to Jack at one point, calling him out for spending most of his life dreaming and trying to make every moment a fun and beautiful one, while also considering his romantic ideas as "bullshit".
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: In the epilogue, we see what happens to some of the characters and Jack's Cuckoo-Clock Heart.
- The clock is eventually found by Brigitte Heim and put on display on the Ghost Train, and then Joe puts it back on Jack's untended grave before it mysteriously returns to Edinburgh.
- As for Miss Acacia, she finally leaves Joe and finds success performing under her grandmother's name.
- Miss Acacia leaving him causes Joe to cross the Despair Event Horizon while continuing to work on the Ghost Train.
- Méliès eventually marries the nurse Jehanne D'Alcy and they open a toy store together, which is pretty much Truth in Television.
- For Jack, see Downer Ending above.
