[Gemini] is a phenomenological fantasy on the grand scale, since it combines the cosmos, the weather and a great variety of landscapes with a rich commentary on the nature of the human consciousness, particularly in its sexual aspect. The French title is Les Météores, a term which, properly speaking, denotes not only shooting or falling stars but all meterological phenomena, and the translation, Gemini, is to be explained by the fact that a basic theme is the Castor and Pollux myth, at least in Tournier's interpretation of true twinship as a closed duality, complete in itself and cosmically significant.

The narrative, such as it is, runs from 1937 to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961. It concerns a prosperous French bourgeois family established in Britanny, which produces three sports or 'monsters,' as respectable families occasionally do: a homosexual uncle, Alexandre, and his nephews, two absolutely...