H-Town noir: Novelist sets dark ‘Sunset City’ in her hometown
Melissa Ginsburg’s new novel, “Sunset City,” has all the elements of a hard-boiled mystery: a violent and inexplicable murder, a troubled but sincere protagonist, an attractive detective and suspects ranging from socialites to porn stars.
And acting almost as a character itself is the city of Houston, the setting for Ginsburg’s dark foray into exploitation, drugs and murder.
“I think Houston is perfect for noir,” Ginsburg said, “because it is a very easy place to hide, to stay lost if you want to. There’s so much space in between everything and a lot of privacy because of that. People tend to stay in their air conditioning, so if you exist in the in-between spaces, you can get away with nearly anything. It’s perfect for crimes.”
Her first-person narrator, Charlotte Ford, selfmedicates with drugs and sex as a way of dealing with the loss of her most significant childhood friend, the beautiful but self-destructive Danielle Reeves. Intent on finding Danielle’s killer, Charlotte weaves her way through the city with lyric descriptions that Houstonians will appreciate. One minute, Charlotte is in River
Oaks, where “it was getting dark. The outside air vibrated all around me. Cicadas whined in the trees, and a slow wet breeze signaled summer’s beginning. The city felt gentle and open.” The next, she is flying down a freeway, “floating through the endless neighborhoods of identical houses, the cul-desacs lined with progressively younger trees.”
It’s obvious that she knows the city deeply. “Growing up in Houston was great in many ways,” she said. “The schools I went to were really wonderful, and I had access to art classes, the museums. I grew up exposed to the ballet, the symphony, all the arts. I went to HSPVA (the High School for the Performing and Visual
Arts) for high school and studied visual art, and I could not have asked for a more ideal situation. Even as a teen, I knew how lucky I was to be at that school.”
Yet at times, the city could be lonely. “When I was a kid, I felt pretty isolated in Houston,” Ginsburg said. “I remember feeling trapped and bored a lot, unable to go anywhere on my own. I went to magnet schools, so I didn’t have friends in my neighborhood, ever. My friends and I used to get rides to the Galleria and watch other people buy things. I also read a lot, spent a lot of time by myself. It was lonely, and I wanted to leave. Everyone I hung around with in the ’90s talked about leaving, moving to Austin or New York or San Francisco, someplace that seemed more hip and vibrant.”
Ginsburg stayed and enrolled at the University of Houston, but she soon left. After college she attended the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, where she studied poetry. She hasn’t lived in Houston since 2003.
“In many ways, the Houston of ‘Sunset City’ is the Houston of my childhood in the ’80s and ’90s,” she said. “I wrote the book while living in other places — Iowa, Los Angeles, Mississippi — so much of it is based on memory rather than direct observation. It’s fictionalized.”
After she left, Ginsburg “felt homesick in lots of unexpected ways. Houston is a great city, and it’s gotten more interesting since I left.” She now teaches at the University of Mississippi at Oxford, but her sister and some of her extended family still live here.
When she visits the city, Ginsburg most looks forward to eating Vietnamese food and visiting the Menil Collection. “I also love driving in Houston — I feel more like myself on a Houston freeway than in any
other situation.”
That theme shows up in Ginsburg’s book, too. At one point, heroine Charlotte admires her friend Audrey’s ability to just drive around. Charlotte says that she, personally, can’t do that: “I have to know the next turn.”
“There’s not much to it,” Audrey replies. It’s the setup for a perfect Houston noir line: “If you don’t care, you can’t make a mistake.”