ডগলাস অ্যাডামসের গদ্যশৈলী খুবই চমৎকার। কাহিনীর নতুন একটা অংশ শুরু করার ভঙ্গিটা উপভোগ্য। গল্পের মোচড়গুলো উপভোগ্য ছিলো। সাড়ে তিন।

Another romp of wackiness mixed with quantum mechanistic hyperbole and time travel played out by nut-job characters bent on saving the world. Gotta love it!

I’ll be honest with you, I’m not particularly fond of ‘The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ novel. The first radio series I love, but the novel fails for me because the best bits in it are just taken from the radio series (which, of course, the novel is an adaptation of) and it doesn’t have a proper bloody ending. As a teen I greatly preferred the world of Dirk Gently, and on re-reading the first of those novels – having forgotten pretty much everything which takes place between its covers – I have to say I was a smart old teenager.

Firstly the flaws: plotting was never Adams’ strong point, and undoubtedly that’s the case here. Suffice to say there’s a murder, an eccentric don, an electronic monk and a number of ghosts – all of which come together with varying degrees of success towards the end. The biggest problem with the plotting though is how long it takes Dirk Gently himself to get involved in the action. This novel is nearly half over by the time he appears, which is a great shame as he is by far the most interesting and entertaining character. A private detective who doesn’t agree with Sherlock Holmes that once you eliminate the impossible whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth; simply because he doesn’t like to eliminate the impossible.

(Thank God – whoever He might be – that there’s a sequel.)

However, despite those problems, this is a highly funny, entertaining and intelligent read. (One, incidentally, which seems to draw on Adams’ past as scriptwriter for ‘Doctor Who’ – a very old man with well hidden time machine does appear). A lot of the characters are vaguely drawn and trying to describe what it’s all about afterwards is quite hard, but if you like smart and absurdist humour which will make you think, then this is definitely recommended.

Incoherent, rarely funny.

This re-read is holistic indeed!

I adore the way Douglas Adams ties together nearly every bit in the end. Or probably absolutely every tiny bit? For I have to admit, that the fully comprehension of the end lies just outside my grasp. But that is one of the many attractions this book has for me. When thinking about it, I get involuntarily caught in one of those space time paradoxons that cause headaches.

Poetry, music, computer work, British Telecom and even the infamous sofa are all part of the greater picture.
The writing is intelligent, hilarious and silly at times. I laughed out loud several times and every other page contains a quote-worthy sentence.

For me, this is Douglas Adams' best work. And I was delighted to realise, that after all these years it hasn't lost a iota of it's fascination for me.

É uma ficção-científica-espírita (rá!) divertida com o melhor daquele humor ferino que só o Douglas Adams tem, mas achei bem aquém daquela coisa extraordinária que é a série do Guia.

Probably 3.5 stars for this one.

As usual, I quite enjoyed Adams's humor and brilliance, but this one, to me, isn't his best work. It seemed rather... erratic in the beginning and then a bit hurried at the end. It was very speculative, and very contemplative and assumed that the reader (or in my case, listener) was keeping right up, but I don't fault Adams for that. I don't want the book to dumb anything down for me. Although, if it dumbs things down for a character in the book, that's perfectly fine. ;)

I really loved the humor in this book, and I think I'll read the second book in the series, as I want to read everything that Adams has written if I can. I think reading this would be more conducive than listening to it was, especially listening while working - tedious as the work may be.

So, overall, I liked it. I laughed out loud quite a few times, and that's good enough for me.

From the title you would think this is possibly about a detective agency. Well there is an agency but they don’t detect things in the normal matter. You should probably guess that since it is a Douglas Adams book and when has he written anything really normal (I mean that in the best way).

Nope for this book n  “Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.”n

There is craziness, absurdity, the interconnectedness of all things and Dirk is smack dab in the middle of it all. He will somehow figure out how a horse in a bathroom, a ghost making telephone calls, a undoable magic trick, the cat in Schrodinger’s Box and an alien electronic monk who can believe anything all have to do with one another.

It is a crazy and fantastic ride that if you just hang back and not think about it too much everything will just all into place. Most of the time Dirk Gently seems to make no sense until he makes hysterical sense. There were times I flat out belly laughed at some of the general obscurity of it.

I will never think of Sir Isaac Newton the same again – or Bach but that is a different matter.
“Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!"
"The what?" said Richard.
"The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a ..."
"Yes," said Richard, "there was also the small matter of gravity."
"Gravity," said Dirk with a slightly dismissed shrug, "yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered." ... "You see?" he said dropping his cigarette butt, "They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap ... ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. It is a door within a door, you see.”

I read both the Dirk Gently books years ago and they are some of the few books that I come back to years later and love for different reasons all over again. If you were a fan of the Hitchhikers series or Monty Python then this kind of humor might be exactly what you need for a good laugh.

I loved The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and had high hopes for Dirk Gently, but this novel just didn't quite do it for me. Its plot is a weak. This wouldn't have been an issue if it had been packed with quotably witty lines like Hitchiker's Guide was, but it is not. There are still some good bits, to be sure, but the laughs are sparse.

I last read this when I was really young and was shortly getting off a fantastic kick of HHGttG wanting MORE, as, I assume, most people do when they get on a Douglas Adams kick.

Like the other series, every page is filled with wonderfully witty and fascinating and wise (crack) quotes that will delight and amaze and generally blow most writing away by the sheer audacity.

To think that Douglas Adams never considered himself a writer! Truly amazing. And of course us fans just snicker at that and keep reading.

I admit to really liking this but not loving it as much as the Hitchhiker series. I don't know. Maybe I just wanted more of the idiot and less of the incomprehensible mystic in systems-theory sheep's clothing.

What can I say? As an adult, I'm doing an about-face and saying that this might be better by far. It's still wacky and zany and full of oddball moments, but it's closer to Earth... mostly... just not always in the same time-zone. :) And on top of that, it was fun as hell getting into all the old computer stuff and getting into the poetry and the music and ESPECIALLY the problem of the couch.

The couch stayed with me all these years and it was such a wonderful character. It almost reaches the same heights as a certain fridge in the next book. Of which I'm doing a re-read next. :)

Now, to be sure, I probably wouldn't have done a re-read at all if it hadn't been for the BBC tv production of the same name, and even as I was watching it I was going... "Is this remotely the same?"

Definitive answer: SOME. lol. Not all that much. Characters, some. Situations, hints. Zany? That's full-tilt. :) All said, no complaints on either side of the tv screen. )

I'm glad to be doing all of the above. :)

I can't actually explain why I liked it as much as I did.

It is a confusing, fragmented story that only has all the pieces fall into place at its very last moments. And even then it was confusing and overwhelming.

But it was charming in its own way.

The various fragments that seemed unrelated slowly pieced together two different stories, and when these two stories started crossing in the midst of the book, I was beyond confused and pleasantly surprised by it's irrelevancy.

I'm not sure how this could have been possible as usually irrelevancy just annoys me when I try to read a book with a good story.

Supposedly it is because these seemingly unrelated bits and pieces somehow seem to complement each other. And in other ways, they made up for the lacking bits of information.

But somehow it only makes sense in hindsight.

Another thing I find interesting is the boundaries between sci-fi and fantasy. This book itself and its author are known to be classed as sci-fi, and indeed the book is ripe with scientific premisses. However I keep thinking my initial instinct of putting it on the fantasy shelf wasn't wrong.

Maybe it's a bit of both. But it just seemed to me, to be more of a fantasy book. A fantastic fantasy book, at that.

This was so weird I have no idea what I just read.