Sad to say this is the first Douglas Adams book I did not enjoy. It felt rushed, everything happening too fast and without giving the reader time to care about any of it.

I first read this book in the late 1980s and I completely loved it. Even more than Douglas Adams' better known series, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

In some ways it's quite dated. Answering machines, no cell phones, no GPS, smoking in public, record players. But for all of that it still works which is testament to the genius of Douglas Adams.

This used to be one of my favorite books when I was 18 (that was more than a few years ago *cough* thirty something *cough*). I was definitely going through a ‘I love everything Douglas Adams’ phase at the time and while I still like this book because sometimes the ridiculousness of the plot and randomness of how everything happens is still so much fun I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did back then.

There are some great things in this. There is Dirk who is a funny and severely quirky character who is often very creative in his role as a holistic detective. I really do laugh at the odd way in which he sees the world and interacts with it.

n  “He had a tremendous propensity for getting lost when driving. This was largely because of his method of “Zen” navigation, which was simply to find any car that looked as if it knew where it was going and follow it. The results were more often surprising than successful, but he felt it was worth it for the sake of the few occasions when it was both.”

“When the girl sitting at the next table looked away for a moment, Dirk leaned over and took her coffee. He knew that he was perfectly safe doing this because she would simply not be able to believe that this had happened. He sat sipping at the lukewarm cup and casting his mind back over the day.” n

While if I met him in real life I’d probably like to deck him, in the story I find his antics and musings completely fascinating and sometimes hilarious.

Some of the story seemed more like just random events to me this time through and while situationally funny I wasn’t sure how it all moved together sometimes. Thor having performance issues was entertaining as was Kate trying to figure out why right after she left the ticketing gate at Heathrow Airport did it blow un and what is with all the penguins in her subconscious.

n  “Insofar as she recognized at all that she was dreaming, she realized that she must be exploring her subconscious mind. She had heard it said that humans are supposed only to use about a tenth of their brains, and that no one was really clear what the other nine tenths were for, but she had certainly never heard it suggested that they were used for storing penguins.”n

Adams wrote some wonderful jokes throughout the story but now that I’ve read so many more books I see where there are some real pacing problems and the actual story is a bit lackluster overall, but the jokes are great.

Even though this isn’t as great as I once remembered it being I still so love to dive into this type of humor from time to time and just give into the improbability and impossibility of it all.

As much as I enjoyed ‘Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency’, I have to say that ‘The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul’ is the better book. The reason for that is simple – you get more Dirk for your pound! Whereas it was halfway through before this most intriguing of detectives put in an appearance in the first novel, here he arrives in Chapter Three – waging a war with his cleaner as to which of them is actually going to open the fridge door (something which hasn’t been done in over three months) and clean out whatever he or she finds within. It’s a highly amusing vignette, and one which Adams has the genius to turn into a major plot point.

Having now re-read the whole canon, I think I’m qualified to examine Dirk Gently as a detective – and I find he actually has a great deal in common with Sherlock Holmes. (A man with whom he has fundamental differences on the subject of eliminating the impossible). Like Holmes he seems to be asexual, with a love of clutter and a great deal of esoteric information at his fingertips. Indeed he is possibly even more observant than Sherlock, as there are things that Dirk would spot which Sherlock would never give a moment’s credence to. Unfortunately though, there isn’t a John Watson equivalent on the scene to recount episode after episode of this great man’s adventures, but then Gently may be an even more infuriating person to hang around with than his Baker Street colleague.

Indeed this tale opens with Gently’s secretary, having finally abandoned him, working at the check-in at Heathrow Terminal Two. When a passenger can’t board a plane the check-in desk shoots suddenly, and inexplicably, hundreds of feet into the air. From there we encounter angry eagles, mysterious Coke machines, one of the most truly bizarre murders in fiction (which is then, truly bizarrely, labelled a suicide by the police) and the entrance to Valhalla through London’s St Pancras station. Once again Adams’ plotting is not as strong as it could be, and the final quarter does drag somewhat, but it’s brilliantly written and the jokes do keep coming.

It is a real shame that Adams died and we don’t have half a dozen more Gently tales (though given his productivity, that probably would have been unlikely anyway). But at least we have the two, and I promise it won’t be another twenty years before I re-read them again.

If this title does not speak to you, then perhaps this book is not for you. I loved it.

I wrote in my review of the Swedish version that it's not all the way as good as the first Dirk Gently - and then I gave it 5 stars and placed it on my favourites shelf. The English original text is, of course, better.

Douglas Adams never fails to cheer me up. Best listened to on audio.

I don't exactly know how to rate this because on the one hand it was entertaining... I read it quite quickly on a holiday since it was the perfect sized book to fit in my pocket. I also really like Douglas Adams books. I love his brand of chaotic sci-fi adventure about wacky characters.

... But on the other hand, this one just didn't quite click with me. I hadn't read the first Dirk Gently book (only watched the TV series), so perhaps it's just that I'm less familiar with it? Or perhaps it's just that it was a little too chaotic. A little too random. A little too quirky for quirky's sake? The story felt like it was going places then ended fairly abruptly within the last 6 chapters, and the 'big resolution' left me with more questions than answers.

Or maybe I'm the one that has changed since reading The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Five Parts as a kid. What was excellent to me as a young reader now feels mildly annoying. So maybe it's just a me problem?

A friend asked what the book had to do with teacups, since there's a large tea set on the front cover, and having read the whole thing I have to say I have no idea. As far as I remember, nobody drinks tea (there's some coffee in one scene), and none of it takes place at tea time.

Overall, 2/5. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this one but I absolutely would recommend just about anything else Douglas Adams has written. I will go back and seek out the first Dirk Gently book just for closure's sake, and perhaps it'll prompt me to update this review when I have more *gestures vaguely* context. Perhaps.

Almost entirely, but not quite, unlike tea–I mean, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. There is no way easy way to say this, but despite ingredients that should be interesting, it just fails to work for me. However, unlike American Gods, which resembles it more than a bit, it is entirely more palatable and has 100% less offensive scenes, so there is that (I may have some trouble with statistics here). Nonetheless, because it is contains some Douglas Adamsisms that have stuck with me through the years, it still had moments of brilliance. Take his airport rule, for instance:

“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression ‘As pretty as an airport.’
Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only known exception to this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.”

This is true. There is nothing about any airport that is pretty. Most people there are indeed tired and cross, which is why when they discover that their plane has been delayed, or cancelled, or erupted in flames, they tend to overreact.



But an airport is just the beginning of roughly three separate plot lines, give or take; a young woman who is thwarted from a vacation to Oslo by a mysterious giant of a man and a fireball blowing up the check-in counter; Dirk Gently, a detective who is hired to protect an unethical producer; and a mysterious old man who would like to lay in bed and be gently catered to by a team of nursing staff. Dirk’s own adventures further degenerate into conflicts with a large eagle and a malevolent refrigerator. It’s all very puzzling mostly due to the narrative breaks and confused protagonists more than any real mystery on the part of the universe.

Having been a fan of Hitchhikers and frequent re-listener to Stephen Fry’s reading, I couldn’t help but see similarities between the lead characters. Dirk comes across like a slightly smarter version of Zaphod and Arthur, a strange mix of lucky and clueless. I don’t know that he ‘solves’ anything so much as stumbles unto the solution. The young woman, Kate, is quite literally, taken for a ride and had some of the general non-descriptiveness feel that I always got from Trillian.

Mostly, Tea-Time contains entertaining interludes and observations loosely connected by plot. To me, it works better in wacky unreal space adventures than in a mystery.

When I was young, I was an enormous fan of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I must have read it ten times. I bought whatever I could then lay my teenage hands on, written by Mr. Adams. But the Dirk Gently series never really gelled with me. Was it a window of interest? I sold off the first, but the title of the second was too, too appropriate to let go. For years I have thought of that saying, that mysterious four o’clock ennui of the soul (both am and pm) and thought that the book deserved a re-read on that alone, as well as notes on a driving technique which I’ve totally used (Note it works much better in rural areas and suburbs).

“Perhaps it would save time if he went back to get his car, but then again it was only a short distance, and he had a tremendous propensity for getting lost when driving. This was largely because of his ‘Zen’ method of navigation, which was simply to find any car that looked as if it knew where it was going and follow it. The results were more often surprising than successful, but he felt it was worth it for the sake of the few occasions when it was both.”

Adams tedy nabízí opravdu šílené jízdy... Při čtení nejde nemyslet na Pratchetta, jeho styl psaní a nedostižné dílo Dobrá znamení, DTČSD je ale přímočařejší, s menším množstvím odboček i postav, zato ale přidává sci-fi detektivní zápletku. Taktéž oproti předchozí Holistické detektivní kanceláři tady nedostaneme na konci všespojující moment, nekončící proud všelikerých scének je ale více než dostačující - mezi nimi je nutné zmínit boj o ledničku, trampoty s orlem, speciální kliniku, získání kafe i knihy (a jinde zase novin), přechytračení opraváře aut atd. atp. Do toho severští bohové, britské kulisy a hlavně holistický způsob vyšetřování. Po dočtení pravda několik nejasností zůstává, jindy tak pomocný internet mlčí (resp. nabízí jen další otázky) a spokojím se tak s několika zajímavými teoriemi ("Hoši od soudu se na ně mrkli, zauvažovali o hlavních bodech a řešení se jim zalíbilo. Bylo jednoduché, nepravděpodobné a přesně takové, jaké kápne do noty koronerovi, který rád jezdí na dovolenou do Marbelly stejně jako oni."), ale že je mezi postavami Loki mi už nikdo nevezme - vždyť přeci umí měnit svou podobu, že...

I had to re-read this because I'm insane but I'm happy to be so because I still loved it.

Total truth time: it's not quite as funny or as sharp in the individual zinger lines as Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, but the long-running story gags are fantastically wicked and cruel and even profoundly sad.

It's also more of an adventure tale for Dirk later on, but primarily, it's all a mystery. Sometimes, the plot is as much of a mystery, too, but I don't care. :) After the rising of new gods in Asgard and the fate of soooo many pebbles, and the dark, dark fate of a Coke machine, who really cares? The novel is brilliant and creative and so darkly funny. It's enough to make me despair for modern literature, and this came out in '88!

Here's another awesome tidbit. It's the novel that I first thought of when I first read American Gods. All the greatness of seeing Odin on the page or Thor blowing up an airport is all here and the characterizations are brilliant.

Can I even say that it's even more brilliant after knowing the legends much better? You bet I can! I read this when I was 14 years old the first time and let's be frank... I didn't know crap. I learned most of what I knew about Thor from this book and the fact that there was some silly Marvel comic that I wasn't even tempted to read was about it. And now? Soooooo Nice! :) Even the little In-Jokes about the gods are all here. It's a bit more erudite than I expected it to be. :)

But it's also so funny! Do I love eagles even more now? You bet! Am I even more annoyed with Yuppies? You bet! Do I want to run out and get some 300 count sheets and snuggle in them, perhaps get an eyepatch and avoid big strapping men with hammers? You bet!

Poor Dirk. I have to admit that his Horoscope is always dead-on. :)

My one complaint is that there wasn't a whole series made out of this. I still wonder just how amazingly cool it could have been to have a full bookcase full of these and point to it as the most amazing thing EVAH.

*sigh*

Some authors just overflow with goodness. Douglas Adams was one of them. *sigh*

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (Dirk Gently #2) by Douglas Adams just hasn't quite worked for me as much as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. While this is a solid story I definitely preferred the full cast dramatization I listened to for book one. I would like to try the tv adaptation one day in the future.