The dimensions of twinship

Press, 20 March 1982, Page 16

The dimensions of twinship

Gemini. By Michael Tournier. Translated by Anne Carter. Collins, 1981. 452 pp. $24.95. (Reviewed by Ralf Unger) Jean and Paul are identical twins whose name bracelets were affixed in the nursing home, but these bracelets have been playfully interchanged so many times that no-one, including themselves, is finally sure which is which. Brought up in a large, provincial French family, their mother shares her love with an institution for mental defectives next door, their father roams through the Second World War and the Occupation wanting to become a hero, and their uncle Alexandre tirelessly seeks the ideal golden boy who will bring him happiness. Jean-Paul are a unit, protected and satisfying to each other, until in adulthood Jean — or is it Paul — breaks away into love with a woman outside the twinship, and Paul — or is it Jean — pursues him across the world to complete his unity. With Paul mutilated by the loss of his physical left side in a tunnel collapse, finally he and Jean become spiritually incorporated in one body. The story is riddled with actuality and

symbolism of twinship, ranging from a pair of pearls that have no value singly, but are beyond price together, to the city of Berlin divided by the Wall in 1961. Uncle Alexandre, a homosexual, sees union of males all about him, including on the .football field, with a scrum ejecting the great egg of the ball. The famed mirrors of Venice reflect each other to a point beyond perception and the features of Mongol children revert to a familial likeness where there is no blood relationship. On the level of twinship, set against the weaker links of all those outside such a union, it is an absorbing account. As a series of anecdotes of sad eccentrics and a minute description of the workings of TURDCO. the Family Urban Refuse Disposal Company, a society debutante at her pre-wedding dance dropping a tapeworm- onto her high-heeled shoes and hundreds of others, it is most entertaining. On the third level it is strongly reminiscent of Gunter Grass’s Tin Drummer, observing the evolution of the three decades from the '3os with the world tearing itself apart and trying to find itself, just as in the twinship of Jean-Paul.