Literature / The Suicide Shop

"Has your life been a failure? Let's make your death a success."

- The Suicide Shop motto

The Suicide Shop (originally: Le Magasin Des Suicides) is a 2006 Black Comedy novel by the French author and film-maker Jean Teulé about the Tuvaches, the family that runs the afore-mentioned shop in the distant future after the "Big One" where life has become meaningless for most, leading to them seeking out the Suicide Shop, where they have a method to kill yourself for any budget. When their youngest son, Alan is born, they discover that he is not like the others.

An animated film based on the book was made in 2012, directed by Patrice Laconte. It also happens to be an Animated Musical.

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This book includes examples of:

• 20 Minutes into the Future: Downplayed, save for indications that their technology is a bit more advanced, including a 3D television set that projects holograms and holograms in general.
• After the End: The story is implied to take place after "the Big One." News reports from the television and radio push it further with reports of extreme weather patterns and other forms of calamities from all over the world.
• Apocalypse How: Judging from news reports, definitely a Class1 (Planetary Scale, Societal Disruption).
• Armor-Piercing Question: "What would you take?" asked a customer to Lucrèce about how she would commit suicide. She briefly spaces out then explains why she, and her family to an extent, must resist the temptation.
• Babies Ever After: By the end of the novel, Marilyn is pregnant with the child of her lover Ernest.
• Black Comedy: The book features several mentions of suicide that are played for laughs.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: Or maybe The Horseshoe Effect, or You Are What You Hate. Due to the ambiguity of the ending, it is hard to pin-point the exact trope. Alan seems to be the complete opposite of his family. He doesn't wish to sell or accept suicide as a natural thing, unlike his parents. He doesn't suffer from depression or self-destructive behaviors like his siblings. He is the only one who fully enjoys life, funny things and happy music. However the final lines of the novel reveal that, deep down, he was just as suicidal as his siblings, simply in a different way. Alan viewed his life as being there to serve only one goal, the reason he was born, to make his family happy. Once this is done, he thinks his task is completed and that he can stop living.
• But We Used a Condom!: It is mentioned that Alan was born because his parents tested out a condom with a hole in it that was meant for customers who wished to commit suicide by contracting a venereal disease.
• Cheerful Child: Alan, to his family's dismay, is very happy and enjoys life. His parents even tried to get him to frown when a customer saw him smiling.
• Compliment Backfire: Alain calling Marilyn "pretty" actually drove her to tears.
• Crapsack World: The reason behind the existence and popularity of the Suicide Shop is because the world has become a desolate wasteland and everyone is miserable. Pollution turned all rain acidic, religions are forgotten things of the past, children are regularly sent to train as suicide bombers as one would be sent to a military school, and apparently the entire world is ruled by a unique Dictator.
• Cruel Twist Ending: The youngest of the Tuvache family is the first one to commit suicide where the story suddenly ends.
• Death Seeker: Marilyn wants to die, but her parents won't let her. The parents too, but feel they must stay alive so they can help the other death seekers.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The Tuvache might be running an unethical business by exploiting the misery and suffering of their clients, but they still have a moral code and are regulated by the law. They can sell you a firearm, but with only one bullet (they refuse to supply murderers). They can let underage clients eat from a jar of poisonous candies, but only one out of two is actually deadly, because according to the law children need a chance to survive. As Lucrèce explains, the shop stands to assure that people who wish to end their life can do it according to their wishes and in a "safe" way that prevents accidents (such as lifelong handicaps instead of death).
  • Also applied to the Death Kiss booth. Mishima is perfectly willing to have his daughter kiss men and women that come in the shop for money, since the kiss itself is deadly and thus counts as a form of poetic suicide (plus it makes his daughter happy and proud). However, the moment a man asks if he can spend the night with her for a bit more money, he promptly shouts him out of his shop.
  • Another Berserk Button of Mishima is that you NEVER scam a customer. If the client does not die from the shop's products, they need a refund and an apology. This is what causes his growing dislike of Alan - the little boy keeps meddling with the shop business, from cutting the hanging nooses so that they will break to damaging razor blades so that they won't cut. When Mishima and Lucrèce find Alan sabotaging the entire stock of the shop, Mishima has such an anger fit he willingly sends his son to a suicide bombers squad.
• Fat and Skinny: Marilyn is described as being chubby, while Vincent is said to be anorexic.
• Forgets to Eat: Vincent is described to be "anorexic". It's even implied that when he became so weak, he had to be injected with a glucose solution which only gets a mention when Alan used it to replace the supposed poison in the syringe that was injected in Marilyn with a needle to give her a Kiss of Death ability. As Madame Tuvache decides to cook actual good food and the Suicide Shop becomes a restaurant, he regains his appetite and has even gained weight.
• Heel Realization: After sending Alan away to join the suicide commando in Monaco (as punishment for being too cheerful), Mishima later sobs in his cellar, realizing that he misses him. The entire family soon feels the same.
• Kill the Cutie: Alan commits suicide in the end.
• Kiss of Death: Marilyn was supposedly given this ability (through a syringe filled with poison injected through her veins) on her birthday to be of use in the store. Subverted in that Alan replaced the fluid with something else beforehand.
• Loners Are Freaks: Vincent is occupied with his inventions. Hence, he's always up in his room.
• Meaningful Name:
  • All three of the Tuvache children are named after suicides. Alan for Alan Turing, Marilyn for Marilyn Monroe (Although, it disputed as to whether or not that was the case)and Vincent for Vincent van Gogh. Also true for the parents: Mishima is named after the modern Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, infamous for committing a ritual Seppuku, after doing a short novel and a movie about it. And Lucrèce is for Lucretia, a virtuous role-model figure in Roman mythology, who committed suicide to cleanse the shame of being raped.
  • Each name turns out to influence their characterization: Mishima has a true love for seppuku (and he even mentions that it is not just because his parents called him Mishima), Marilyn ends up dressing like her namesake when they open the deadly kissing booth in the shop, Vincent is a red-haired and self-destructive Mad Artist with bandages around his head...
  • The young graveyard caretaker that becomes Marilyn's fiancé also fits: his name is Ernest, in reference to Ernest Hemingway. Mishima immediately spots this, which only makes him a better son-in-law to his eyes.
  • Even more: the town in which the shop is located is also filled with suicide references, from the local florist being named "Tristan and Iseult" to the neighborhing highschool being called Montherlant (a French writer who killed himself after going blind). An interesting case is the boulevard on which the shop is located. In the novel it was called "Bérégovoy" after a French Prime Minister of the 90s that committed suicide after being accused of corruption. However, while the official records and the investigation concluded to a suicide, it stays to this day a muddled case with strange circumstances encouraging the idea of a political murder. Due to the ambiguity of his death, when the novel was adapted into a comic book the boulevard was renamed to Virginia Woolf.
• A Mistake Is Born: Alan's parents state that they did not plan to have three children and that Alan was conceived when they tested a condom with a hole in it meant for customers who wished to kill themselves by contracting a venereal disease.
• Ms. Fanservice: Alan's teenage sister Marilyn, though dramatically lacking in the area of self-esteem, gets to be this as she starts exploring her femininity.
• Nightmare Fetishist: The entire Tuvache family take great pleasure in helping their customers kill themselves. Except Alan, of course, much to their chagrin.
• The Pollyanna: The trope of a character remaining happy and optimistic in spite of their misfortunes is exaggerated to great effect. No matter what, Alan can and will find the bright side in all things dark and dreary.
  • Subtly played with however in the end. As it turns out, Alan is just as suicidal as the rest of his family was. It just so happened that he waited for his sole goal in life, making his family happy, to be completed before killing himself.
• Sudden Downer Ending: Alan's self-imposed demise by letting go of the bandage that was used to pull him up after accidentally falling from the shop's tower. The book isn't exactly lighthearted fare as it revels in its dark humor but it still comes as a shock.
• Suicide as Comedy: Alan's sergeant during his stint in the Monaco suicide commando team ends up blowing himself up out of frustration at the child's cheery demeanor.
  "Watch carefully as I'll only be showing you once."
• Talking Down the Suicidal: Alan convinces a female customer who wanted to kill herself because she thought she was too ugly that she has reason to keep living.
• Theme Naming:
  • The Tuvache family are named after suicides (see Meaningful Name).
  • A cemetery warden named Ernest falls in love with Marilyn.
• Weight Woe: Inverted. Marilyn and Vincent begin the novel miserable with their bodies. She is ashamed of being overweight and believes she is doomed to be the "clumsy and ugly girl", while he is a dangerously underweight anorexic repulsed by the mere sight of food. Their journey to happiness and appreciating life comes with accepting their bodies: Marilyn realizes that her curves make her a Big Beautiful Woman, and she gains both confidence and sensuality, while Vincent develops a love for food and from a skinny man becomes a jolly and pot-bellied artist.
• We Will Have Euthanasia in the Future: Set in a shop that sells it.
• White Sheep: Alain is looked down on by the rest of the Tuvache family for his cheerful nature.

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