The Suck: Or, Do You Wash Our Fuckfingers With Your Tears?

A woman moves to The Insecure and Megalomaniacal Village with her unruly flock of children and her children’s father. The Village monitors women’s sexuality and reproduction. Life is hunky-dory, as long as you play by the rules.

But the main character’s loneliness is deep. The children’s father is distant and both family life and the larger community are claustrophobic.

Soon she meets Minty, a trio of girlfriends, and an army of illegal au pairs. A resistance movement hacks The Village’s common reproductive cycle. Thus a community arises, making room for the woman’s desire.

The main character’s voice carries the novel with its fable-like, satirical and tragic energy. If patriarchal power forms the backdrop of love then what can you do—as a mother and as a person—with your manifold yearnings?

About the author 

Ida Marie Hede (b. 1980) has written eight books and many plays. "Adorable" [Bedårende], published in English in 2021 (Lolli Editions), was nominated for the Danish Critics Prize in 2017. The critically acclaimed "The suck or Will you wash our middlefingers with your tears?" was nominated for Politiken’s Literature Prize and the Montana Prize. Hede received the Danish Arts Council’s three-year working grant.

Text translated by Sharon Rhodes