Review - The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul

Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first send mad. Dirk Gently is not mad, he’s livid. He’s annoyed with his cleaner for not cleaning out his fridge (that starts the novel as a biohazard and ends up as a WMD), he’s angry with the eagle that keeps swooping at him, removing bits of Dirk on regular occasions and he’s enraged that others seem to know more about the odd things that are happening to him than he does, removing his ability to behave in a mysterious manner as neatly as his client’s head is removed from its body in the opening of the book.

Mysterious he may not be, even with his prop leather coat and unfeasible hat, but charismatic he certainly is. Even when he’s fending off psychotic teens, fencing with the surly waiters at a café or simply engaging in a war of nerves with his cleaner, he’s almost a fascinating a character as he thinks he is, which makes him one of the most fascinating characters in literature. Oddly, he’s likable too.

Angry as he is (and he builds from a base state of annoyed resentment tinged with fear and driven by anxiety at the start of the novel to baffled rage (pretty much the human condition actually) towards the end) Dirk is not as angry as Thor, who is very angry indeed. In humans anger results in a change in complexion and possibly a strongly worded letter to some institution where it will go in a little frame in the office with the label ‘winger of the week’ below it, when you are the God of thunder anger results in the destruction of an airport terminal and the transmutation of people and objects into animals and, er, other objects.

The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul deals, probably far too realistically, with the prospect of what happens when gods (in this case the Norse pantheon) and humans mix. Anyone who knows anything about gods, or humans, will know that when gods and gods mix there’s trouble, when humans and humans mix, there’s trouble and when gods and humans mix, there is trouble cubed. The prime example of what happens when gods and humans mix is also the solution to the mystery that drives all other mysteries in this book and the revelation is very satisfying, because it confirms that our uncharitable view of certain types of people, and certain types of god, was right all along and does not mean that we are mean-spirited emotional dwarfs.

You will laugh when you read this, and you will be gripped, and you will occasionally be gripped with laughter. The humour is here in a constant background state, just like Thor’s anger. In fact there’s probably enough going on in this book for a normal author to have spun out into a series. But Adams was far from a normal author. He packs in the ideas sideways to the laughs. There are a lot of ideas here and a fair education about the behaviour of gods in general and Norse gods in particular might help (broadly, if you’re British, your education will cope, if you are not – fire up Wikipedia). Those who know more will chuckle not just at the slapstick but at the subtle references, then feel smug about getting a reference, then annoyed because that feeling of smugness is socially abhorrent, then smug again because knowing a bit more about this sort of thing than others is how Dirk would feel all the time and so you are identifying with a character, then worried because that character is Dirk.

If you don’t have a firm grounding in the behaviour of gods, or the behaviour of policemen, or the behaviour of waiters, then you need not worry; you will still laugh like a tickled baby baboon at the other bits, of which there are many. You will also finish the book knowing a hell of a lot more about gods, and men, and eagles, and fridges, than you did to begin with. The book even unravels one of the greatest mysteries of all – exactly why some women have just so many bath products.