Gemini by Michael Burns published in 2001 by Poncha Press will be republished by All Things That Matter Press in 2010: What follows are some excerpts and blurbs from various sources:
Gemini: Back cover blurbs:
“Mike Burns has carved out a piece of New England life, passed it beneath a powerful magnifying glass, and come up with Gemini, the compelling story of one man’s desperate struggle for an identity, a better self, a better life. This is a gritty, funny, sad, entertaining, and moving work, rich in detail, full of rancor and love, failure and wisdom, weakness and regret, and a host of memorable, expertly drawn characters. Burns writes with compassion, skill, generosity, and sharp-eyed verve.”
__Rosemary Mahoney, author of Whoredom in Kimmage and A Likely Story
“Michael Burns’ Gemini is a compelling, fully realized novel whose moral center is the stuff of all great literature: one man’s struggle against every man’s enemy—himself.”
___Sanford J. Smoller, author of Adrift Among Geniuses: Robert McAlmon, Writer and Publisher of the Twenties.
Inside dust cover synopsis:
Set in rural Vermont during the 1968-69 academic year, Gemini is the story of one man’s effort to salvage his life. Jack Scanlon returns to the place of his birth after an eighteen-year absence. Due to his excessive drinking, he has lost his wife and young daughter, and subsequently his engineering job. He has retreated to his native Vermont and taken a position as a high school science teacher, and has moved in with his uncle and his wife.
A rather large cast of characters gradually emerges, which includes his new colleagues and students, as well as relatives of his uncle’s wife, who remember him as a boy growing up in the town. Scanlon encounters almost constant tension between the two cultures of the school and his hometown, exacerbated by the pain of the loss of his daughter and his increasing abuse of alcohol.
Scanlon’s ambivalence extends to his views on the war in Vietnam, the current hippie culture, and his own identity. He watches as one of his colleagues, a young Fulbright Scholar, agonizes over whether to defect to Canada or serve the war effort he abhors. After an incestuous dream, Scanlon is driven to seek psychological counseling. He begins weekly visits with his counselor, with the unlikely name of Robert Kennedy. Kennedy becomes not only his counselor, but his alter ego. The somewhat unorthodox therapeutic method employed by Kennedy involves whiskey drinking during sessions. The relationship that develops between the two becomes fundamental to Scanlon’s continuing struggle for a better life.
Gemini: Excerpts from reviews:
“Through sarcastic wit and striking honesty, Burns writes with a resonant realism.”
___Jana Brown in the Alumni Horae of St. Paul’s School
“For Gemini is in many ways a Horatio Alger tale in reverse. Jack Scanlon is a self unmade, and our task as readers is to watch all the layers fall away, which they do with help of his whiskey-drinking counselor, Robert Kennedy, whose alcoholic rationalizations include references to Emerson. The world is one of American individualism gone awry.”
____Jamie Neilson—“The Unmade Man,” Pembroke Magazine #34
”The weekly visit to the shrink’s office is the true axis about which this novel spins; Kennedy and Scanlon pathetically rely on sipping whiskey to catalyze their discourse. These sessions are the yardstick by which the reader measures Scanlon’s dubious progress toward his life’s overhaul, and Burns colors them with painful honesty and quirky, volatile, smartly-written dialogue.”
____J. T. Leonard, The Lowell Sun
“Scanlon is a strong, albeit troubled, character we can sympathize with and cringe at through Burns’ witty dialogue. Burns presents a believable, honest story full or irony and wit.”
____Karen L. Rose, Foster’s Daily Democrat
