Gemini [Paperback]

Michel Tournier (Author), Ann Carter (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 5, 1997

Jean and Paul are identical twins. Outsiders, even their parents, cannot tell them apart, and call them Jean-Paul. The mysterious bond between them excludes all others; they speak their own language; they are one perfectly harmonious unit; they are, in all innocence, lovers.

For Paul, this unity is paradise, but as they grow up Jean rebels against it. He takes a mistress and deserts his brother, but Paul sets out to follow him in a pilgrimage that leads all around the world, through places that reflect their separation—the mirrored halls of Venice, the Zen gardens of Japan, the newly divided city of Berlin. The exquisite love story of Jean-Paul is set against the ugliness and pain of human existence. Gemini is a novel of extraordinary proportions, intricate images, and profound thought, in which Michel Tournier tells his fascinating story with an irresistible humor.

Editorial Reviews

Review

An exceptional, incomparable novel.

(Jean Genet )

The most extraordinary piece of writing for years... 'Gemini' is about a pair of identical twins, collectively known as Jean-Paul. Saying this, however, is a bit like saying that 'Ulysses' is about a man walking around Dublin, because Tournier uses the theme of twinship to explore a near infinity of dualities. In addition to playing with such traditional oppositions as heterosexuality and homosexuality, city and countryside, heaven and hell, Tournier elaborates ingeniously on the profound opposition of chronology and meteorology—the fixed, regulated march of the hours on the one hand, and the wild, unpredictable fluctuation of the seasons on the other.

(Salman Rushdie )

Astonishing; an El Dorado of ideas.

(New Statesman )

Book Description

Tournier's novel is a love story that uses the theme of twinship to explore a near infinity of dualities.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 452 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (December 5, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801857767
• ISBN-13: 978-0801857768
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,370,350 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A bountiful of ideas, June 16, 2006

By 

Ventura Angelo (Brescia, Lombardia Italy) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gemini (Paperback)

The richness and profoundity of this novel is not often encountered: every page teems with ideas and insights on the human conditions.It narrates the story of a french family between the thirties and the building of the Berln Wall, and expecially the lives of the twins Jean and Paul, initially forming a very close communion of souls. But one of the twins breaks out and goes to live with a mistress, eventually traveling around the world follwed by his estranged counterprt. Their history is the occasion for exploring all instances of pairing, of complementarity and contrapositions, of the fundamental duality and ambiguity of reality and the human soul. The characters are depicted with profound and original insight of their emotions and the meaning of love and religion. If you haven't read this book, do it! You'll feel enriched and nurtured while sumptuously entertained.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Incestuous beyond all others...", October 19, 2007

By 

Sugunan (Singapore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gemini (Paperback)

This is a love story with a difference. Jean and Paul are identical twins, so alike that people have given up distinguishing them and simply call them Jean-Paul. They have a relationship that is "incestuous beyond all others" (meaning it exists at 4 levels: between siblings, between same-sex siblings, between same-sex twin siblings, between same-sex twin identical siblings); each night they make love not in the crude, vulgar, maladroit manner of the heterosexual, but in a sort of seminal communion, a transcendent exchange that expresses the oneness of the universe. But as they grow up Jean begins to feel the suffocation of Paul's ovoid embrace. He runs away from Paul, and Paul embarks on a search in places that reflect their twinship and separation --Venice, Japan, Vancouver and divided Berlin. To Paul, the identical twin is the most perfect of all beings; he feels sorry for the abject solitude of singletons and non-twins, and scoffs at their efforts to attain, through heterosexual sex, a form of imperfect, ersatz twinship. The irony is that his twinship itself is imperfect, because Jean wants none of it. Paul's search for Jean is a metaphysical search for wholeness that is touching and pathetic. Michel Tournier's novel is extraordinary in its rich, dizzying explorations of dualities, complementarities, oppositions, reflections, separations, conjoinings and dispairments. The language --beautifully translated here-- is dense and lush with images, colours, smells, ideas that startle the reader with their sheer beauty and novelty.With stupendous originality, Tournier has given love a whole new dimension.

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars NEVER THOUGHT I'D FIND A BOOK LIKE THIS - THE WAY THAT I DID, July 7, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Gemini (Paperback)

Exiting a Barnes and Noble in Manhattan I spied the title and cover photo on this book. It was on a table of "books on sale", selling for about $4.00. As a new father and a Gemini (astrologically) I was intrigued by the book's cover and when I read the comments from Jean Genet and Salmon Rushdie on the back, as well as a description of the book...I was definately hooked.

WOW...am I glad I bought that book.

I am really into this book and I can't explain why exactly. It haunts me. It keeps drawing me back to it. It's full of ideas, great writing and I love what I learned about Ruah, Zen Gardens and the intimate connections of twins and non-twins alike.

This book is definately for folks who like to think about the interdependence of things, of people and places...and about the intimate relationships of semmingly disconnected phenomenae. Oh man.

I love this book. Find out for yourself...if you can find it!!!