The novel “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul” by Douglas Adams was published for the first time in 1988. It’s the sequel to “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency“.
Kate Schechter has to catch a plane but when she’s at the check-in an explosion disrupts her life. She’s taken to a hospital, where luckily the doctors find nothing serious but she ends up involved in a story that becomes stranger and stranger, mainly because of Thor, the god of Norse mythology.
Dirk Gently, the holistic detective who operates under the assumption that there’s a fundamental interconnectedness of all things, was hired by a wealthy client haunted by a monster. Unconvinced by this and other details of the his client’s claims, he ends up being involved in a much more complex story in which he meets Kate Schechter and the gods of Valhalla.
A year after the success of “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency”, Douglas Adams published another novel that features a private detective whose methods are very different from those of Sherlock Holmes. “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul” is completely independent from the first novel and everything you need to know about Dirk Gently is explained so the only thing the reader needs is to “tune up” to the style of this truly unique author.
Douglas Adams always had a tendency to write novels with plots not always very clear, at least at the beginning, full of funny moments and lines. In “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul” this trend is taken to the extreme in a story that’s really surreal even by the standards of this author.
Dirk Gently’s cases of are never normal but every now and then he finds a customer who just seems crazy. Instead, this time the murder of the client involves him in a story even more absurd than he could imagine. His investigation leads him to have something to do with the ancient gods of Valhalla.
In fact, “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul” is in many ways Kate Schechter’s story rather than Dirk Gently’s. As in the previous novel, the holistic detective sometimes seems almost a secondary character who happens to find himself involved in the someone elese’s business. This makes sense if you think of his approach to life, which consists in waiting for clues on what to do to pop up on their own rather than go looking for them.
For this reason, the plot is really fragmented and eventually Douglas Adams tries to put the pieces together more or less consistently. Honestly, my impression is that the author got too focused on the individual moments to create funny situations ending un overlooking the novel as a whole.
With a novel structured, or unstructured, in this way, the reader’s response is more subjective than ever. “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” had already left me a bit cold, “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul” for me was overall a disappointment.
The characters are a bit sacrificed and the pace tends to be slow. A novel such as “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul” shouldn’t be judged on this basis since it’s essentially a comedy with elements of science fiction and fantasy. However, I personally found that these characteristics have weighed on its reading.
Personally, I’m OK with comedies full of moments even isolated built to be entertaining with witty jokes but if behind them there isn’t some coherent plot I tend to get lost. I got used to Douglas Adams’ style but “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul” is really too fragmented for my tastes, so much that they end overwhadowing many moments that should be funny.
As “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency”, “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul” was adapted for a radio drama. Instead, the short TV show inspired to this character doesn’t use the story of this second novel.
I know that many people appreciated “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul”, unfortunately I found it overall boring. If you liked “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” its sequel might be your kind of stuff as well.
