Consensual Cannibalism, Communism & Cults

A Literal Literary Loser Shares the Love

Are you surprised that this Literal Literary Loser loves alliteration? Well, I do. Which is how I came up with today’s title.

But all three really do feature in my May 1, 2025 historical fiction, “Go On Pretending.” (Pre-order now from the publisher and get a FREE gift! Now! Right now! What are you waiting for?)

The most obvious one is: Communism.

My first historical fiction, “The Nesting Dolls,” took place in 1930s USSR during Josef Stalin’s Great Terror, 1970s USSR during the Jewish refusnik movement, and present-day Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. My second historical fiction, “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region” took place in, well, the Jewish Autonomous Region. Which was in the USSR.

What? You didn’t know that our great friend of the Jews, Joseph Stalin, gave the Jews of the world a homeland twenty years before the establishment of the State of Israel? That’s because it went so, so well. As all things under communism do.

Which brings me to “Go On Pretending.” Did you know the USSR once threw a pro-democracy festival? Yes, they did. You can read about it, here. What kind of people went? What kind of people decided to stick around? And what happened to them when it turned out democracy wasn’t exactly what the Soviet Union was into?

In “Go On Pretending,” a pair of Americans decide to leave their privileged lives in New York City and make the move to Moscow, USSR. They are both highly educated, intelligent people. And yet they both make this seemingly unfathomable decision. (Well, one of them does. One of them makes the decision to go along with her unfathomable decision. Because that’s what he’s into.)

I have long been fascinated by how highly educated, intelligent people fall for all sorts of scams, Communism being at the top of the list. Even today, after refugees from the Soviet Union, from China, from Cuba, from Rumania and East Germany share their stories of what it was really like, it is primarily the highly educated, intelligent people who correct them by saying, “No, that’s not what it was really like. You were just tricked into thinking it was really like that by evil capitalist interests. Besides, when the right people are in charge, people like us, it won’t be like that. It will be perfect, just like it already is.”

(Side note: I am also fascinated that these same people, who would never dream of telling my African-American husband that his lived experience wasn’t valid, and, in fact, rail against those who would, have no qualms doing precisely that to any survivors of totalitarian regimes who would disagree with them about Communism.)

Though it’s not just Communism which fascinates me in that respect. All cults do. In “Go On Pretending,” I touch upon everything from Jim Jones’ followers in Guyana (I was living in San Francisco, where his People’s Temple began, when news of his Kool-Aid mass suicide broke in 1978, and it made a huge impression on me; I was a picky eater who wouldn’t even consume what was given to me - I couldn’t imagine everyone taking poison just because they were told to), to the Libertarian communes (there’s an oxymoron) of this century, which led to bear attacks and other unforseen side-effects of individual freedoms taken to the extreme.

Oh, and also to consensual cannibalism.

Did you know that that was a thing?

I looked it up. It’s a thing.

And it’s included in “Go On Pretending.”

Can’t wait to hear what you all think about… everything!