[Gemini] is the work of a mind expanding under the apparent beneficence of praise, performing with both an obligation to grandeur and a licence to self-indulgence. The grandeur is frequently impressive, the project kept up with remarkable stamina: but the self-indulgence, as well as weakening the structure, also undermines the confidence of the reader. Tournier is not a man to make a point once if he can make it a dozen times, or to use one word if he can use a thousand. Subjected to this immense performance of reiterative loquacity the reader increasingly responds with both 'I know …' and 'What, really, does it mean?'

The novel's meaning emerges from its study of twinship, Jean and Paul Surin are twins so identical that even their father cannot tell them apart; their physical similarity is coupled with an emotional and psychological identification, not of sympathetic reactions but...