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S. J. Heinz’s “We Must Be Titans: Office Mythology” is a darkly comic exploration of corporate life that transforms the mundane horrors of office life into an epic tale. Blending memoir-style narration with mythological flourishes, this fictional memoir offers a strikingly original perspective on the workplace, complete with Gorgons, Titans, and a narrator whose journey from corporate climber to self-aware survivor will resonate with anyone who has ever felt trapped in a cubicle.
At its heart, this is a coming-of-middle-age story. The narrator, Connie Huntsman, recounts her entry into and evolution through the bureaucratic behemoth of Magic Wraps, a fictional packaging company whose bloated structure and absurd policies will feel painfully familiar to corporate veterans. Beginning in the 1990s when Connie arrives in a three-piece suit with a haircut like Rachel from Friends, the narrative follows her rise and stumbles over the years through a series of vignettes that reveal both the absurdities and beauties of work life.
From the outset, Heinz’s mythological framework sets the novel apart. “So then, if they are Gorgons… we must be Titans!” Connie declares, invoking the ancient world to process the carnage of corporate life. The office becomes a battlefield of gods and monsters, department heads transform into Gorgons, cliques become demigods, and HR looms like Mount Olympus. Her world is populated by towering personalities like “Monster Mary,” a ruthless manager with a mop of salt-and-pepper hair and a penchant for humiliation, and Tallulah Cherniavsky-Brown, a domineering colleague who “guarded their orders like a hawk” and inspired one of Connie’s waking nightmares of Medusa.
Magic Wraps itself becomes less a setting than a character, a dysfunctional Leviathan that chews up idealism and spits out cynicism. Heinz masterfully satirizes corporate culture through absurdities like the “Go-Team-Go” employee ranking system, which rewards networking over competence. It’s workplace satire worthy of Dilbert, but with more heart and nuance. “In 1999, I was still a sincere person. It was just a matter of time,” Heinz tells us.
The novel’s prose is clean and warm, with flashes of deadpan wit and insight. Characters are rendered with nuance, especially the women who form the emotional core of the story. Connie’s complicated friendship with Jean—alias “Birdie”—is a particular highlight, their bond cemented through music, mutual office disillusionment, and joint performances of Bob & Gene’s “It’s Not What You Know, It’s Who You Know.” This song becomes a recurring motif, “masterfully combin[ing] a swing dance called jitterbugging and a form of brown nosing known as elbow rubbing; a catchy R&B ditty that summed up my experience at the office.”
The most powerful theme is how the pursuit of “success” erodes identity and authentic relationships. In one of the book’s most powerful moments, Connie reflects on her firing not as tragedy but as liberation: “It took being let go to recognize the price that I paid to achieve the goals laid out so simply and seductively in women’s magazines.” Her later realization that she “lost myself, caught up in the belief that reaching my full potential in Corporate America was measured by the amount of money that I made” echoes a broader and pretty timely generational malaise about hollow ambition sold in pastel suits.
Though the novel sometimes meanders in its episodic structure and occasionally over-indulges in minor character portraits, it remains compelling through Heinz’s distinctive voice and clear vision. The book becomes less about career strategy and more about survival, of self-respect, of friendships, of dreams sacrificed on the altar of performance metrics and peer reviews. However, the book’s humour is likely to resonate only with a specific audience and may fall flat for readers unfamiliar with office culture.
For fans of The Office, Nora Ephron, or Caitlin Moran, this book will strike a familiar chord while going deeper than a lot of workplace comedy. With a blend of bite and grace, Heinz captures the generational shift from viewing the workplace as a ladder to be climbed to understanding it as a labyrinth to be survived. Ultimately, “We Must Be Titans” is an imaginative triumph, succeeding in turning the mundane into the epic.
You can get your copy of “We Must be Titans” here!
