[Gemini reveals] Tournier's astonishing gift for the exact, comprehensive, and economical description of complicated processes and objects….

Tournier exploits his details ceaselessly and explicitly for their symbolic potentialities….

But Tournier also has problems with detail. Vendredi…. reads in places like a repository of more or less bizarre descriptive tours de force. included despite the requirements of narrative cogency. The attempts to tie them in do not convince. The same is true of Gemini. It is arguably too long by a third. There are ingenious things in the last 150 pages, as Paul, seeking to restore the "geminate cell," pursues Jean, who seeks to destroy it, round the world. But the dominant impression, quite apart from the uncomfortable guide-book facts and figures on Venice, Iceland and Japan, is of heterogeneous material resisting integration into the main body of the book, Tournier is a master of the massively ramified conceit, but...