The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul
Created | Updated Feb 3, 2002
The book I read is called “the Long dark tea time of the soul” and it is written by Douglas Adams.
Douglas Adams is a contemporary English author and master of dry British wit. He is most famous for his best-selling book series; “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.
Douglas Adams was born in Cambridge in 1952 and received an MA in English from St John’s College, Cambridge.
He had a long and varied career which included working as a chicken shed cleaner and as a bodyguard for an Arab royal family. In 1971, Douglas lay drunk in a field in Innsbruck, Austria, thinking about the galaxy and how you might find your way around it. He came up with the very popular Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which was originally a BBC radio play and then became a series of five books.
Douglas Adams died recently on March 11, 2001, at the age of 49 from a heart attack.
The book I read , “Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul“ is a hilariously funny book that Adams wrote in 1988.
The story’s centres around the fact that the Norse gods, being immortal, are left on their own when humans cease believing in them. They aimlessly wander Asgard, as well as Earth, as they no longer have a function. They are never noticed because humans simply refuse to believe that they have seen anything out of the ordinary.
The main characters in the book are Kate Schechter and Dirk Gently. The story switches between the two characters at different chapters and Kate and Dirk’s paths meet towards the middle of the book.
The book starts:
QUOTE (airports) p.13
Kate Schecter is at Heathrow aiport in London waiting at the check-in counter for a flight to Norway when she encounters some trouble. The man in front of her is a large Nordic man who is having problems with the check-in girl because he has no passport, no ticket, and no money and wants to get on the flight to Oslo. Kate finally gives up waiting and is walking away when suddenly the check-in counter blows up in a ball of orange flames.
QUOTE (claim responsibility) p.23.
Kate Schechter wakes up that night in hospital and she sees the big Nordic man from the airport in a bed not far away and he seems to be in a coma. In the morning, Kate finds the Nordic man is gone and when she asks the nurse, she is told he has gone to Woodshead private hospital. She intrigued by the bizareness of the Nordic man and decides to visit him at Woodshead.
Little does Kate know that the big Nordic man is, in fact, Thor the Norse God of thunder. And that currently Thor was glued to the floor of an old warehouse as punishment by his father, the God Odin, for what he had done to the airport check-in counter. At Woodshead, however, Kate finds no sign of the Nordic man and leaves.
Meanwhile that morning, Dirk Gently, who is a private detective, wakes up. And he suddenly remembers he is five hours late for an urgent appointment with his client, who was worried about being killed by a green man with a scythe that he says had come to see him about a contract he had signed. He arrives at his clients house and finds it swarming with police. Dirk discovers that his client has been brutally murdered while locked inside his room with no point of entry or escape. Dirk examines the room and finds a large envelope with his clients name on it behind a picture on his wall. Dirk pockets it and leaves.
While Dirk is driving home he meets Kate Schechter when he absentmindedly rear ends her car. They start talking and they go to a nearby pub. Once the car is fixed, Kate goes home but standing in front of her building is the man from the airport, Thor the God of thunder. Thor is suddenly violently assaulted by eagles and Kate brings him into her apartment to clean the wounds. Thor tells Kate that he is a God and tells her that he must go to Asgard (the home of the Gods) to confront his father Odin and he brings Kate with him.
During that time, Dirk Gently arrives at his house to find an eagle perched on his doorstep. He goes inside and the eagle follows and starts attacking him. He manages to trap the eagle in the front hall and goes outside. He heads out on a walk looking for cigarettes and ends up following a procession of odd looking people who go into the St Pancras Station.
Inside the people mysteriously start to disappear until none are left. Dirk goes to where he had last seen them and suddenly his world shifts and he finds himself at the great hall of Valhalla where the Gods are having a feast and expecting a confrontation between Thor and his father, Odin.
Thor and Kate arrive and they find out the meaning of the events of the day.
The book was very well written and I found extremely witty. Douglas Adams’ writing style is unique and he writes in clear direct prose which he successfully infuses with his briliant dry humor and irony. The actual plot of this book was quite complicated and the end is somewhat confusing and deserves a second read.
Personally, I found “The long dark tea time of the soul” to be a wonderfully entertaining read and even preferred it to a few of Adams more popular Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy books.
This book, however, is not that accessible. I found my copy in a small second hand bookstore in a town called Lismore in Australia. I know the Central branch of the library carries a copy though and possibly chapters.
