Regional Office Is Under Attack (Gonzales)

The Regional Office Is Under Attack! 
Manuel Gonzales, 2016
Penguin Publishing
416 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594632419


Summary
In a world beset by amassing forces of darkness, one organization—the Regional Office—and its coterie of super-powered female assassins protects the globe from annihilation.

At its helm, the mysterious Oyemi and her oracles seek out new recruits and root out evil plots. Then a prophecy suggests that someone from inside might bring about its downfall. And now, the Regional Office is under attack.

Recruited by a defector from within, Rose is a young assassin leading the attack, eager to stretch into her powers and prove herself on her first mission. Defending the Regional Office is Sarah—who may or may not have a mechanical arm—fiercely devoted to the organization that took her in as a young woman in the wake of her mother’s sudden disappearance.

On the day that the Regional Office is attacked, Rose’s and Sarah’s stories will overlap, their lives will collide, and the world as they know it just might end.

Weaving in a brilliantly conceived mythology, fantastical magical powers, teenage crushes, and kinetic fight scenes, The Regional Office Is Under Attack! is a seismically entertaining debut novel about revenge and allegiance and love. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1974
• Raised—Fort Worth and Plano, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Texas; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Awards—Sue Kaufman Price for First Fiction; John Gardner Prize for Fiction
• Currently—lives in Lexington, Kentucky


Manuel Gonzales is the author of The Miniature Wife and Other Stories (2013) and his debut novel, The Regional Office is Under Attack! (2016). He is an assistant professor of writing at the University of Kentucky. He and his wife have two children.

Gonzales graduated with a BA in English from the University of Texas in 1996 and then with an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Columbia University's School of the Arts in 2003.

His fiction and nonfiction have been published in McSweeney's, Fence, Tin House, Open City, One Story, The Believer, i09.com, and various other publications. He is the recipient of the Academy of Arts and Letters Sue Kaufman Price for First Fiction and the Binghamton University John Gardner Prize for Fiction.

For four years he ran the nonprofit writing and tutoring center for kids, Austin Bat Cave, and in times past he co-owned The Clarksville Pie Company in Austin, TX, where he baked pies for a living. (Adapted from University of Kentucky profile.)

Book Reviews
Zounds! Something has gone horribly wrong. After 20 years of fighting against the forces of evil, The Regional Office has come under attack, but no one can figure out why…or who. Manuel Gonzales has written a terrific, quirky novel, a real genre-bender that’s tough to pin down (and put down). It’s hard to know what to call it—sci-fi, fantasy, action-thriller, parody, or romance. Answer: All of the above, which is precisely what makes the book such fun.  READ MORE.
P.J. Adler - LitLovers


Supernaturally powerful though they may be, these characters, like us, are constantly searching for their role in the world: the place where they fit in…Like Gonzales's 2013 story collection, The Miniature Wife, The Regional Office Is Under Attack! is primarily concerned not with the action-packed events at the surface but with the greater question of human alienation, through talent, technology or a combination of the two…. Gonzales's prose is crisp, but fittingly looping and parenthetical, often doubling back on itself to offer a slightly different interpretation…. The Regional Office Is Under Attack! is an entertaining and satisfying novel. Like the best of the stories it satirizes so gently, it's rollicking good fun on the surface, action-packed and shiny in all the right places; underneath that surface, though, it's thoughtful and well considered. Gonzales has created a superheroic fighting force of the kind we've grown so used to through constant exposure to the Avengers and various iterations of the X-Men, and then he has turned out their pockets and flipped open their diaries.
Kelly Braffet - New York Times Book Review


The novel is divided into four books, and we read about Rose and Sarah in short bursts of action that alternate between the past and present. It’s an odd narrative structure,...which may be why this book feels more like a pitch for TV than a fully fleshed out novel; it is tailor-made for the small screen. And yet, it’s just so much fun to read.
Dallas Morning News


[H]ighly entertaining… Wonderfully strange and fun, Gonzales’ novel follows both the women attacking and defending the Regional Office and how their lives intersect.
Buzzfeed


Like the writers he is compared to, Gonzales’s stories’ fantastic premises are always anchored in real-world conflicts that hold universal familiarity. The Regional Office is Under Attack!, …carries some of his stories’ thematic arsenal into a book length narrative…. The story nods to tons of tropes—from Kill Bill and Charlie’s Angels to Blade Runner and The Karate Kid—but it frequently subverts those tropes and uses them to flesh out characters that dazzle.
Rumpus


The Regional Office is Under Attack!—set in the underground headquarters of an organization deploying a team of "superpowered warrior women" to battle "the forces of darkness that threaten, at nearly every turn, the fate of the planet"—is fundamentally an office novel, a tale of the prosaic struggles of young adulthood, set, with deliciously rich irony, against a distant background of absurdly operatic adventure.
Slate


[A]n intricate, if frustrating, debut novel about a subterranean superhero organization under attack by its own rogue operatives.... Gonzales writes with an abundance of imagination, riffing on comic book and pop culture plot lines and characters while adding his own unique perspective. The novel...occasionally feels overextended, but there are moments of brilliance.
Publishers Weekly


[A] nonstop action fest peppered with pop-culture references, explosions, and karate-esque fight scenes.... The plotline can be confusing owing to the narrative changing among the characters, and their differing perceptions of reality, but the action is captivating. —Jennifer Funk, McKendree Univ. Lib., Lebanon, IL
Library Journal


(Starred review.) You might want to get a firm grip on your socks before cracking open this one; otherwise, Gonzales is likely to knock them off. It's very difficult to categorize this mind-bending novel... it's pure excitement.... A brilliant genre-blender.
Booklist


A clash of swords, spells, and wills erupts in an upper Manhattan office building under assault by well-armed mercenaries. A dense mythology threatens to undermine this frenetic action novel..., but the author just manages to wobble to the end.... A surprisingly erudite bit of sci-fi that throws in everything but the kitchen sink.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
We'll add the publisher's questions if and when they're available. In the meantime use our LitLovers talking points to kick off a discussion for The Regional Office Is Under Attack!...then take off on your own...

1. Describe Rose, her personality, upbringing and her longings. Why is she disgruntled enough to lead the attack against her former employer?

2. Same goes for Sarah. In fact, what does the novel suggest about the need fit in, to belong, not just for Rose and Sarah but for all the characters?

3. Talk about Oyemi and Mr. Niles and how they came to found The Regional Office. Is Oyemi insane? And why does Mr. Niles begins to have second thoughts about the enterprise?

4. What about the mysterious Henry? Playing both sides? Motivations? Is Henry the good guy...or bad guy?

5. In attempting to fill out his fictional world, Manuel Gonzales weaves in excerpts from an essay subtitled, "Tracking the Rise and Fall of an American Institution." What do you learn about the world in which the book's characters live? Is there enough information for you to get full sense of what that wider fictional world is like?

6. Did you find the sudden switch in point-of-view to the hostages jarring...or a clever and revealing narrative move on the part of the author? What do we learn through the above-ground workers' complaints and resentments?

7. What is Gonzales satirizing in The Regional Office Is Under Attack!? Consider, for instance, whether an office setting—with its humdrum, prosaic tasks—offers a sufficiently heroic setting for an epic battle between good and evil. In other words, think how Gonzales makes use of familiar sci-fi / thriller tropes to break the genre open and reveal the deeper truths of the people who populate—and read—fantasy novels. Consider the all-too-human need for escape, adventure, acceptance, and belonging—as those needs apply both to the superheroes within the genre and to the readers of the genre.

8. What is the meaning of the message from the Oracles?—The one who once loved will one day destroy that which was loved. How did Oyemi misinterpret the message? And who turns out to be "the one" predicted to destroy the Regional Office?

9. The Regional Office commits crimes to safeguard society. Are those crimes justified?

10. What actually happens at the end? Who lives? Who dies? What about Emma?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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