Stupid Children

by Lenore Zion

Jane lived happily in Miami Beach with her father until his failed suicide attempt and relocation to a mental hospital forced her into the foster care system. By chance, Jane is assigned to foster parents in central Florida who are deeply involved in the Second Day Believers&mdasha cult focused on the “cleansing” of mental impurities in their children, and the sanctity of the internal organs of farm animals. Jane is quickly initiated into the Second Day Believers, but her father’s lingering voice prevents her from becoming entirely indoctrinated. Despite Jane’s resistance, she is revered in the cult as the second coming of the late wife of Sir One, the leader of the Second Day Believers. Poised to rise through the ranks of the insane cult and marry their leader, Jane must make a difficult choice.

Stupid Children is a story inspired by Katherine Dunn’s, Geek Love, and written in a voice similar to Donald Barthelme. Hilarious, offbeat, fast-paced and wildly imaginative, Zion, a doctor of psychology, imbues her characters with bizarre psychological abnormalities to create vivid, memorable eccentrics that leap from the page. With deadpan, wonderful ruminations on tattoos, the nature of coincidence, drug use, father-daughter relationships, mental illness, violence, and deviant sexuality, this novel is destined to become a cult favorite.

Genres: Fiction, Horror, Cults, Mental Health, Dark, Mental Illness, Coming Of Age

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Lenore Zion's first book, "My Dead Pets are Interesting," was published by TNB Books in 2011, and she was an original contributor to The Nervous Breakdown. Zion's second book, a novel called "Stupid Children," was published by Emergency Press in February 2013. Zion has a doctorate in clinical psychology, a degree which spawned her interest in psychological abnormalities. Her specialty is the treatment of sexual pathology, and her dissertation focused on the paraphilias - sexual impulse disorders that include exhibitionism, pedophilia, fetishism, sadism, masochism, and frotteurism, among others. She lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Paltia · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unusual story with occasional bursts of wisdom. At times, the narrator, Jane, seems to rant and then she is filled with revelations on a wide range of topics. She never comes across as a stupid child but more as an ageless being who has earned her rightful place at the head of the table. It’s her job to inform the world what she’s heard and seen while in foster care and a cult. She does this with feeling, but never too much. Most of her experiences are related from the intellect. It’s those moments when she speaks directly from her heart that the story delivers. Lenore Zion serves up a unique understanding of the unsettling events in the wilderness of abandoned children.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

review to come

[reqbat · Rating 3 out of 5]

great concept, but messy storytelling, dropped threads- it never comes together well, which is disappointing. also, too short! trying to cram too much into 159 pages. would have done better to be double that length with a more detailed story.

[Anita Dalton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The cover of this book drew me in. A white little girl – white skin, white underwear, long blonde hair – is standing behind a rope in a ragged backyard in late fall, or early winter. The look on her face is unfathomable to me, but the confrontation is undeniable. She is standing there, in her socks and underwear, unprotected in the wind, literally holding on by a string, and staring at you, the reader. Her expression could be anything from veiled disgust to melancholy to vague interest in the camera as a break in the bleak boredom of the landscape.

This book, at turns neurotic and gross, touching and funny, is strangely grounded by this cover. This book has a strange, over-the-top cult that engages in really nasty rituals. The heroine of the book is hilarious and neurotic. The plot-line gets loose at times and the strange wackiness of the book can occasionally make the reader forget that at its heart this is still a book about a little girl whose mother is dead, whose father is in a mental institution, who ends up in foster care in the home of cultists who marry her off to an old man in a scenario reminiscent of so many stories that came out of the FLDS sects. Zion handles all of this heaviness with a humor and open-minded acceptance of the bizarre, but the cover ensures you remember a smart little girl in a forsaken place is at the center of the story. Outside of House of Leaves, I can can’t recall a time when a book’s cover ensures you don’t miss some of the most important details of the book. The girl on the cover helps you remember that this is a very upsetting book, even as you find the prose quite amusing at times.

Quick synopsis: Jane’s mother is dead and her father had a breakdown. He attempted suicide and becomes up a long-term resident in a mental hospital. Jane is sent to live in foster care and ends up living with a family indoctrinated into the fictional Second Day Believers, a strange cult that merges properties of Scientology (weird ideas about mental illness and its treatment), FLDS (marrying young girls off to older men powerful in the cult) and a very gross, borderline pagan attraction to animal entrails. Jane becomes close to her foster brother, Isaac, and their relationship takes a dark turn as Isaac becomes rather unhinged himself, a young proxy in Jane’s affection for her unbalanced father. Jane eventually becomes far more valuable to the cult than the cult is to her but her love of Isaac keeps her from leaving the madness until Isaac forces the issue in an act of numb but horrifying violence.

You can read my entire discussion here.

[Chuck Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy shit.

[J.A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the latest selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club, and with all the talk about it, I was glad to dig in. The story is interesting for sure (a lighter, gentler version of the cult focus of someone like Brian Evenson), but I think the novel could have benefited from a tighter edit. There are sentences which seem unnecessarily cumbersome, and patches of vocabulary strangely standing out. Maybe it's just the editor in us though, or our taste in style. Maybe. Ah well, not all of them can be absolute winners.

[Travis Fortney · Rating 1 out of 5]

My review from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, which you can find here: http://bit.ly/XS0IkU

--

This is the second just-released bizarro novel about a cult that I have read and reviewed this week, and I would urge readers who are curious about Lenore Zion's Stupid Children to instead purchase Fiona Maazel's Woke Up Lonely, which I had my reservations about but is the far superior novel of the two. Readers who have read Ms. Maazel's novel and are looking for something in a similar vein, I would advise to look elsewhere or broaden their horizons.

The main problem with Stupid Children--not that there aren't many, many problems with the book's concept plot and characters--is loose writing and poor editing. To choose a passage at random from the beginning of the book, take the following: "My father had a problem with insomnia for many years--specifically through the years during which I was preparing to break into early adolescence."

The most glaring problem with that sentence is that there are many ways to say the same thing in far fewer words. For example: "When I was a preteen, my father had a problem with insomnia."

Or, more simply: "My father was an insomniac."

After all, at that point in the book we already know the narrator's approximate age. Not to be too blunt, but a large part of a writer's work is deciding when to use five words and when to use fourteen. Even worse, the above sentence is directly followed by this: "I was seven, eight, nine years old, and he came into my bedroom in the middle of the night to shake me awake."

Which conveys, again, the narrator's age and the fact that her father is awake in the night, along with the new information that he wakes her. So, really, the first sentence could be cut altogether. If it seems like I'm making an argument for a certain kind of minimalism, I'm not. With the first sentence, gone, the writer could use the opportunity to fill the space with an interesting detail that might pull us deeper into the story. For example: "When I was in the third grade, my insomniac father would come into my bedroom bristly-necked and smelling of blackberries and kneel beside me until I woke."

Not a perfect sentence maybe--certainly there are more interesting details available--but it accomplishes what the other two sentences do in approximately half the space, is more specific, and provides an interesting detail. It draws the reader into the scene rather than killing story's momentum by drawing attention to the negative qualities of the writing itself.

I wouldn't usually pick apart a pair of sentences like that, but the writing really is the problem with Stupid Children, and sadly, those sentences aren't among the worst in the book. A book this short shouldn't feel so long and cumbersome.

I know that there's been a certain amount of positive chatter around this book in the form of reviews at a few websites, a spot on a certain book club, and blurbs by well-known established authors. If you already own a copy of Stupid Children because of this, cheer up, because reading it could prove to be an important event in your life as a reader--I promise you, you'll never again mistake a little generated buzz for the real thing.

[Niamh · Rating 1 out of 5]

wasted potential.

honestly such a interestingly disturbing premise for a story that missed the mark by a lot due to the abundance of waffling and unnecessary anecdotes which the writer believes relates to the story but for me personally, as the reader, just ends up skimming past.

whooooooole lot of beating around the bush, inner monologue ramblings which works for a variety of books but just wasn’t executed within this one - which is a shame because the plot was intriguing.

too many deep, bleak and dark stuff occurred just for it to not be addressed, or skimmed past which is a shame. oh well.

🦟🐄🦔🪵🌧️🏥⛪️🕍📞🕯️🔪🚬🩸💉🧑‍🧒

[Paul Wilner · Rating 5 out of 5]

My notice, for Zyzzyva magazine, follows below:


http://www.zyzzyva.org/2013/02/27/a-g...

[mas · Rating 5 out of 5]

that was devastating

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pfff could’ve been so much better if it was written in the present moment and not so many flashbacks that made it confusing.

[Jessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

huh

[Kristopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Death is inescapable; It’s all around us, no matter where we are, no matter what we do. How we perceive it though, is up to us.

Following Jane through to her journey of adolescence; the failed suicide attempt of her father, and then foster-care, her life is full of colour.

It’s always interesting to see how a person can lose absolutely everything and then begin to rebuild themselves from the ground up.

Some will give up and collapse, others will build themselves stronger.

Of course, the Second Day Believers will claim that their goal is to help Jane, but ultimately it’s up to her how she responses to their beliefs if she even agrees in the first place.

Fostering a new adventure
The majority of the fun comes from her carers, who just so happen to be Second Day Believers, a cult that focuses on cleansing its children of all their mental impurities.

One of their methods includes re-birthing the children out of a dead cow, for them to take on their own spirit animal. Jane’s (a bob-cat), by coincidence, is the same as the groups’ elderly leader, which is only the start of their similarities.

Is Jane the leader reborn? Will she lead the Second Day Believers forward in the name of their religion? Does she care?

Any man wearing a badge on his chest boasting one particular quality or value is a man who is hiding ten other qualities and values he didn’t see fit to pin to his lapel. - Lenore Zion, Stupid Children

Her new parents, Connie and Martin (Madame and Sir Six) are eccentric in both their ways and beliefs. They certainly have their own methods when it comes to raising children within the community.

These new ideas are what test Jane’s way of thinking, especially concerning her deeper introspections on death.

Speaking of inward death, it’s a common theme running throughout Stupid Children.

Where ever Jane goes, death seems to follow, and from a young and impressionable age, it’s easy for her to concede that it’s her fault.

However, a lot of it’s either life taking its natural tole or unfortunate events.

When she’s still young, her father buys her a hedgehog to help her deal with the death of her mother, as well as understand further the passing of living creatures; as eventually she’ll have to deal with the hedgehog’s death.

Unfortunately, Bushpig the hedgehog dies after six months; voiding its bowels all over its cage.

Jane starts to wonder if this is the same way in which her Mother died – One big final mess for somebody else to clean up.

She adopts a strong adult voice throughout the book, which comes from the fact that she’s almost had to parent her own father since the death of her mother.

He’s struggled with life since, constantly turning to Jane for reassurance and stability.

These comparisons show excellent introspection from Zion, bringing together the corresponding links between the death of a loved one, and the unanswered questions that follow.

While on the subject of Zion, she has a doctorate in psychology, specialising in sexual pathology. This definitely shines through in the book.

Topics of learned helplessness and a mother’s role are also touched upon throughout.

Surrealist Acid Dreams
What sets this book apart from others is the surrealist nature of the cult, much like the Binewski family in Geek Love.

This permits the reader a chance to take in the whole thing with a pinch of salt, not taking it all too seriously.

A perfect example is the barn scene towards the end.

Jane wakes from a manger, housed in a pink bedroom that’s surrounded by barbed wire.

She’s visited by a gentleman in a wheelchair, known as Sir One, who’s accompanied by two women, both of whom are wearing clothes of, ‘a preacher from the early 1900’s.’

The absurdity is played entirely tongue-in-cheek, but you can’t help but enjoy how the environments, along with the characters inhabiting it, unfold.

Closing Thoughts
Stupid Children is an excellent illusionary trip through the distorted confides of a sectarian cult.

With surreal imagery, matched with philosophical musings that tip the scales well into the balance of exciting, the book is both pungent and wild. Given that the book is only 150 pages long, it’s short, punchy, and definitely worth your time.

[Nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a book that kept me reading well into the early morning. Typically that is a good sign. This a book that contains some dark subject matter (which may be an understatement, depending on who you are); a girl whose father just attempted suicide is put with foster parents who are part of a cult that worships the innards of animals. Things go downhill from there. Zion does an exceptional job of developing her characters in a realistic manner; how they react to the situations they are presented with is easy to sympathize with, for the most part. Of course, this aspect of her writing could be chalked up to her background in Psychology. The only potential problem I had with the book is that it ends too quickly; the climax can be seen as rushing by after a hundred something pages of build-up. However, this does not detract from the experience. If you don't mind uncomfortable subject matter, I would definitely recommend picking up this book.

[Clarissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stupid Children is a disturbing book. So much happens to Jane in Foster Care it is hard to read. I found myself cringing as she described the "cleansing ceremony." This story is fiction but we have recently had young girls held against their will for years by a madman. Bizarre, yes! Could it really happen? Absolutely! Foster kids, runaways, missing children.....there are stories worse than this, that make the headlines, a few times each year. Parents, know where your children are and who they are with!

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird book, but weird books tend to heal my wounded inner terrain, sending me on a wild spree of improbability.
The truth of my gluttony is in how I gobbled up the words in three sittings. The last time that happened was thirty-odd years ago. So I sailed the lyrical words and laughed out loud in places, not wanting the book to end. Lenore Zion is surely a wordsmith.

There is a serious message in this book, underneath all the musical sentences of shock and reflection.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really felt for Jane and her father. And I would certainly hope that the state of Florida screens foster parents better than this in real life . . . the cult was beyond bizarre, and cooked up some really grisly methods of indoctrinating their children. Amazing that any of them got out alive, with any remnants of sanity intact.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short, but powerful story of a girl trapped in a cult by the foster system.

[anjali (^_−)☆ · Rating 4 out of 5]

» 4 ⭐ ౨ৎ⋆˚｡⋆

While readers may be drawn to this book due to its intriguing plot, let it be known that Stupid Children is so much more than what is promised in its blurb. Masked in its disguise as the tragic tale of our main character — a young girl named Jane who is indoctrinated into a cult by her foster family — is a layered examination and profound look into the human psyche, revealing just how much our upbringings and surroundings affect the way we differentiate between right and wrong, normal and abnormal, and fact and opinion.

When Jane finds her dad in their kitchen with blood gushing from a self-inflicted wound in his neck, she calls the authorities, thinking they’ll be able to help her because that’s what she’s been told. What she doesn’t expect is for them to thrust her into the foster care system, subsequently sending her to live with a new family while her father is sent to a mental asylum. Jane’s new foster parents are unlike any two adults she’s ever met. In private, she is forced to address them by the titles “Madam Six” and “Sir Six” rather than their actual names, Connie and Martin. It later becomes apparent why when she is told that she will be baptized into a new religion: The Second Day Believers.

The Second Day Believers is a religious cult that primarily focuses on indoctrinating young children and has an obsession with the use of animal innards in their rituals. After only a few months with The Second Day Believers, Jane has figured out that any attention given to her by the cult elders is bad attention and the one thing that she has to avoid is to stand out. Unfortunately, after Jane’s rebirthing ritual on her fifteenth birthday, a series of events unfolds which lead the cult members to believe that she is the incarnation of the late Lady One. Thus, at the age of seventeen, she is forced to marry Sir One, the leader of The Second Day Believers: a wheelchair-bound, paralyzed man who is thirty-something years her senior and has a weird and borderline incestuous relationship with his “daughters”.

Stupid Children is not just another cult classic. It offers insight into the mental and emotional struggles that an impressionable young child may endure if they are brought up under unconventional and inappropriate circumstances. What made this book even more enjoyable to me was the fact that Zion knew what she was talking about. Having a doctorate in clinical psychology allowed her to provide a realistic view into the minds of individuals who have gone through serious, back-to-back trauma.

Jane, The Second Day Believers, and the people around her were not just walking clichés. They were skillfully written and well-thought-out characters who, at times, sounded so real that I was honestly surprised that this was a work of fiction rather than an autobiography.

Zion also offers in-depth and perceptive conversations on an array of topics, ranging from the experience of getting your first, meaningless tattoo to a mother’s role in her daughter’s life to actions deemed “socially acceptable.” All of these topics are discussed thoroughly, truly leaving no stone unturned. She delves into great detail, further demonstrating that she knows what she’s talking about and will do so in an addictive and intriguing manner.

Stupid Children is an underrated, sick and twisted work of art, and I appreciated every single second of it.


【 ♐︎ *.✧ pre-read thoughts ◡̈ 💭 ☆ﾐ ₊˚⊹ 】
〰️ i’m always going to be intrigued by a book about cults

[Mae · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can safely safe that I have never, once, read anything like "Stupid Children" before, and that alone is worthy of praise as it's quite hard to find something one can call wholly original these days. Somehow telling a complete, comprehensive story in just under 200 pages with almost no dialogue is quite a feat, and Lenore Zion managed to pull it off.

"Stupid Children" follows a young girl named Jane who goes into foster care after her father attempts to slit his throat, and is tossed into a new family, who just so happen to be part of a cult called The Second Day Believers. After some time in the cult, and some unfortunate coincidental choices, they decide she's the reincarnation of their leaders dead wife. Filled with gruesome imagery, Zion gives any horror movie a run for its money. From pulling the stitches out of her arm to forcing her to be 'reborn' after forcing her inside the stomach of a cows corpse , the book is quite graphic and yet hilarious at the same time. Unlike most psychologists who end up writing fiction, Zion doesn't hide the crazy, but instead lets it sit right out there in plain view, for all to see, and it's all the more glorious for it.

Playing fast and loose with time, quickly running through Jane's youth and even jumping ahead in time every now and then for short discussions regarding Jane and her therapist or the end of the book where she discusses her time with her father after finally being 'rescued' from the cult . "Stupid Children" abides by almost none of the 'rules' we've decided literature depends on, instead chucking them out and favoring its own brand of rules, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Clocking in at around 180 pages, the book is a quick read, despite being full to the brim with content, including moments that made me actually laugh out loud. While she has written a book of essays and a handful of articles here and there, this is the only novel Zion has written, and if it ends up being the only thing she ever writes in this fashion, then it will stand as a triumphant 'fuck you' to standard literature. Not only is it one of the best books I've read, but it's the sort of book that makes me want to try and be a better writer.

The only thing wrong with Lenore Zion's writing is that she doesn't have more to read.

[Matthew Hypher · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the quiet desolation of Lenore Zion's Stupid Children, we find a narrative that cuts to the marrow of human experience, a landscape as stark and unforgiving as any stretch of McCarthy's borderlands. It is a novel that stands like a solitary tree against the vast and indifferent sky, its branches twisted by the winds of madness and redemption.

Zion crafts a world where the innocent and the damned walk side by side, their paths converging in the shadow of a cult's dark embrace. Her characters are etched with a precision that speaks to the heart of their brokenness, each one a testament to the resilience and fragility of the human spirit. They move through the pages like spectres, their voices echoing the silent screams of those who have been lost to the wilderness within.

The prose is a thing of stark beauty, sentences carved from the raw stone of truth and laid bare for the reader to behold. Zion's language is spare yet potent, capturing the essence of a world where salvation is as elusive as the morning mist. Her words resonate with a quiet power, a reminder of the darkness that dwells within us all and the light that sometimes flickers in its midst.

In Stupid Children, Zion has created a work that is both harrowing and sublime, a novel that lingers in the mind long after the final page has been turned. It is a testament to the enduring power of storytelling, a five-star achievement that stands as a beacon in the night, illuminating the depths of the human soul.

[anna near · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have no idea why my expectations were so high for this book, but I do know that I'm so disappointed. Stupid Children follows Jane as she is indoctrinated into a religious cult and subsequently arranged to be married to the elderly cult leader. That's an insanely interesting premise, and yet it so dull and just torture to read.

The writing was a mess. Like I'm sure people love it, but it was repetitive and thought it was cleverer than it really was. Imagine the winner of a 7th grade slam poetry contest going on to write a full length novel... Well, maybe not a full length. Another massive weakness of this book was how short it was. I easily think it could've been 400 pages because hello getting drawn into a cult takes a hot minute. The progression of time in Stupid Children was so choppily done.

Maybe I'm just a hater, but wtv. -5/5

[Jodell · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't even know how the Author got the ideas in her mind to write this book. But it was definitely one most messed up books I ever have read. I can't wrap my head around what she was trying to say but I don't want to. I don't care how the Author thought up this stuff, I don't want to know what she meant by it. I don't want to examine what maybe she meant.
NO..... this book was: Sick, twisted, disgusting, nightmarish, unbelievable, terrifying, and grossly wrong on every level. It gave me no joy in reading it, I got nothing from it but revulsion and disgust.  
Kill me now!
I can't wait to take this ILL back to the library, and I never want to talk about it again. I'm going to pretend I never ever read this book.

[andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitivamente si tiene cosas fuertes pero me pareció bastante llevadera la historia ya que la narradora (y protagonista de la historia) así como reconoce el gran impacto que tuvo y tiene ella todo lo que vivió a causa de quedar atrapada en un culto, también logra contarlo todo con un toque de sarcasmo y hasta diría yo que desapego (creo que tiene que ver con que ha hecho las paces con gran parte de su historia gracias a estar yendo a terapia con el Dr. Green). Reconoce lo mucho que la dañó y la traumó todo lo que vivió pero creo que nunca termina de tomarse todo tan en serio ya que ella nunca fue fiel creyente o seguidora del culto, siempre los vio como ridículos y absurdos. Me gustó mucho!

[bun-e · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book greatly. Starting from the no-nonsense, dry attitude of the MC, to the fairly realistic description of a cult from a child's POV, to author's tongue-in-cheek remarks about society. The MC is quite obviously a “gifted kid”, but unlike many authors who try to tell it, L. Zion skirts around it, letting the reader come to that conclusion themself. The language is a little stiff at times, which I think is perfect - teenage angst of a smart girl in bad circumstances is just like that: a little bitter, a little raw.

[mercilyedes · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love culty books, and although this was on the 'milder' side of culty stories, it was filled with the same eerie feeling they all carry. i liked following jane's thoughts and recollection of her early years with her father and her time with the second day believers. jane's commentary and sarcasm made me chuckle, i loved her voice and the flow of what felt like inside jokes with the reader.

i really enjoyed this concept, but something was missing. i'm not sure what though, maybe i just wanted more of this story.

[Vanesa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jane’s story is so interesting to me and how Zion paragraphs give a reasoning of the whys in janes actions is what kept me hooked to the book. As many have said before, it lacks conclusion to some ideas but when i look back to them, they really don’t need them, that i prefer to imagine the backstory, the aftermath and such. Overall good story plot and i found myself caring for Janes friends in the foster care.

[Darcie Olson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book enough to finish it but it wasn’t what I hoped it would be. I imagined more of a Tara Westover Educated vibe and this book did not present that way. It was good, but perhaps should be introduced less as a “cult favourite” and more of a brief memoir? type of book — not totally sure, but would say I needed to lower my expectations going into this as I kept waiting for the more exciting/interesting parts and felt like we never got there

[vero ꪆৎ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 ✩ // “you are dead if you are human and you are being attacked by a human. you are dead if you are a deer and you’re being attacked by a human. you are dead if you are a human being attacked by a deer. there is no correct response, no infallible equation for physical safety—when you are a witness to a violent act, your role is to accept your fate, whatever the aggressor decides it may be.”

[sheerin · Rating 3 out of 5]

“You are dead if you are human and you are being attacked by a human. You are dead if you are a deer and you’re being attacked by a human. You are dead if you are a human being attacked by a deer. There is no correct response, no infallible equation for physical safety—when you are a witness to a violent act, your role is to accept your fate, whatever the aggressor decides it may be.”