Within the aforementioned Tuvache family, which runs a shop for suicide equipment amidst these dire circumstances and instructs customers on their use, Alain is born and almost immediately begins to subvert its melancholic orientation.

The family has two other children – the anorexic oldest brother, Vincent, who is the creator of the shop's suicide-oriented hardware, and an equally maladjusted and obese sister, Marilyn, who hates her life.

As time goes on, first Vincent and Marilyn, and then Mishima, are subverted by their exuberant sibling and offspring, until the Suicide Shop transmutes into a novelty store, sending up its earlier macabre and melancholic orientation.

In a twist, however, it is Alain who ends his life at the close of the book, aware that he has provided a raison d'être to reject melancholy and morbidity within his family and the surrounding community.

[1] Mohammed Aïssaoui reviewed the book for Le Figaro, and wrote that Teulé's humour has "the right distance – neither too light in the content, nor too heavy in the drollery –, a nice dose of derision, and the imagination necessary for such a subject.