Dizzying Heights is, in fact, a dizzying book, chocked full of twisty turns and scheming characters. A satirical look at Aspen, Colorado, and her colorful denizens, this novel attempts giddy heights only to fall slightly short under its own unwieldiness.
There is a lot of plot in Dizzying Heights. First, Wadsworth Brush, the erstwhile hero of the story, comes to town to eke out a living after having been laid off from his software-programming job in Seattle. Waddy gets a job, rescues a dog, gets a better job and falls in love a couple of times. The better job that Waddy procures is programming for a database that records consumer fantasies in order to then sell the fantasies as targeted marketing techniques to manufacturers. This fuzzily ethical database project is the brainchild of one Mortimer Dooberry, a pop-psychologist scalawag, forever searching for his next big scam. Dooberry successfully courts all the Aspen players to back his latest scheme: Victor Grant, an incredibly wealthy and ruthless financier, who sneakily intends to take over the project if it looks fruitful; Etta Eubanks, a Texas oil woman, and her alcoholic artist-husband, Sherry Topliff; Peyton Post, heir to an indoor plumbing fortune, and his financial whiz of a wife, Chloe.
Meanwhile, couturier Justin Kaye (a thinly-veiled Ralph Lauren, frankly) is working up a scheme of his own: to despoil the last undeveloped valley in Aspen, ostensibly for a wild duck preserve and hunting club but really for dozens of multimillion dollar home sites. Aspen’s local eco-cops, Friends of the Friendless Earth, led by Philida Post, sister of Peyton, are adamant about protecting this last valley so Justin must do some quick finagling which ends up involving a high profile New York attorney and several local Native American tribes.
Article comments