That Demon Life

Winner of the Gival Press Novel Award --- Linda Smallwood, a sometimes difficult, sometimes depressed criminal defense attorney, finds that her life mirrors what the Rolling Stones call That Demon Life. Here in over the course of a grueling week, Linda encounters a parade of thugs, slackers, and eccentrics-hookers, lawyers, bartenders, cab drivers, and political fixers of various stripes, a world with echoes of A Confederacy of Dunces. She loses her job, falls back into a relationship with her now-married ex-fiancé, and convinces her best friend to seduce and blackmail the man she holds responsible for her misfortunes. Linda's absurd and dislocated life reflects the rhythms of the city and culture she lives in, yet when she finally confronts her enemy who she then attempts to rescue, she discovers that the joys of love and revenge are not all they're alleged to be.
"The slacker blonde has found her muse! In the hilariously disinclined attorney Linda, a no-account Austinite whose idea of legal research is a rerun of Law & Order, White has given us a transgendered update of the madcap A Confederacy of Dunces. Indeed, you could say Dunces is done one better in That Demon Life, because this swift-moving new picaresque of work-avoidance takes us into the realm of sex. Amid the complications that flower so colorfully out of the death of Linda's pet bird-you'll scent a fresh and nutty bloom every few pages-we are treated to the kind of lust-besotted escapades that leave a county judge stumbling naked through the urban sprawl, poking up tabloid writers rather than Lone Star rattlesnakes. Amid all the unhinged carrying on, I'll be darned if our Linda's take-it-or-leave-it blasé doesn't prove a moral center, and deliver a riotous epiphany."
-John Domini, judge for the Gival Press Novel Award and professor of English and Creative