In a novel that is simultaneously irreverent, gut-wrenching, satirical and sorrowful, Gonzales demonstrates a fresh and varied voice, along with perfect comedic timing...If anything, Gonzales’ novel is itself an attack on snobbish notions of what genres of writing can be considered 'literature.'
Add it all up, and you’ve got two central characters, each with two different timelines and a nameless omniscient 'historian' filling in all the background information. Then Gonzales tosses in this slightly uncanny 'interlude,' which feels both artificial—because who really thinks and speaks collectively—and alarmingly realistic—because this, you sense, is the unflattering truth of how it really would go down in most hostage situations. It sounds like a crazy salad of a novel, but what binds the whole thing together is a persistent, self-contradictory human desire to both be extraordinary and to fit in, finally, somewhere.
Like far too much of Manuel Gonzales' debut novel, this enticing hook doesn't stick; rather than tackling globe-shaking adventure and intrigue, the story dwells on the internal politics and convoluted history of the mysterious Regional Office, as well as the lives of two young women, Rose and Sarah, who find themselves on opposing sides of the book's titular attack. This narrower focus does have plenty of possibility, and to his credit, Gonzales shows glimpses of wit and brilliance. What Office mostly fails to do, though, is give enough of a reason to care about its mythology-heavy plot — or the characters caught in it.
Gonzales’s prose is crisp, but fittingly looping and parenthetical, often doubling back on itself to offer a slightly different interpretation. The point here seems to be that there is no such thing as a simple story, because all stories are about humans, and no human is entirely knowable. This is high-concept stuff, and opportunities get lost in the shuffle...Still, 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.
Regional Office certainly has more than a hint of the Marvel universe in it. Some characters get altered by strange irradiation events, others are partially bionic. There is love and death and punching. The plot is as explosively paced as a comic book’s, but juggles some dextrous genre shifts ... Gonzales’s book engages with the clichés laid down by the 70s political thriller, but it does so creatively. It gathers up conventions of all genres – hot killer assassin teens, hostage-scenario nailbiter, supernatural mystery – without sinking into any of them, or letting them get stale ... The novel is not the subtlest or most literary ever written, but the emotional currents flowing beneath and through Gonzales’s blockbuster action scenes are remarkably well rendered.
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, but nothing new for readers who enjoy shows such as Lost, Once Upon a Time or Arrow, 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. Gonzales, a former Austinite now living in Kentucky, is a gifted writer who effortlessly pushes and pulls the reader through shifting timelines, and his smooth writing style sparkles with wit.
