Seventy Times Seven

By Salvatore Sapienza
The Haworth Press, $15.95

Following the highly publicized scandal of James Frey's alleged fabrications in his memoir, A Million Little Pieces, and charges that Augusten Burroughs exaggerated events of his eccentric childhood in Running with Scissors, Salvatore Sapienza's Seventy Times Seven seems like the polar opposite—an engaging, thoughtful memoir presented as fiction. Just like his protagonist, Vito Fortunato, Sapienza prepared to be a brother in the Catholic Church and taught at an all-boys Catholic high school in Queens. Also like Vito, Sapienza has presumably wrestled with the challenge of recognizing his spirituality and sexuality as equal gifts, a challenge he charts with candor, humor and more than a few Madonna lyrics in his breezy and touching novel.

Teaching religion to a roomful of adolescent boys at a Queens' Catholic school by day and throwing up outside some of Greenwich Village's oldest gay bars at night provides Vito with two seemingly incompatible paths. His compassionate spiritual director, a butch nun from another parish, advises him to “choose life,” and Seventy Times Seven takes us along on Vito's journey of discernment as he figures out what “life” is. While working at a San Francisco AIDS center for a few weeks in the summer, he meets Gabriel (“Annunciation” imagery intended), a recently divorced volunteer, and their platonic evenings of videos and take-out food barely hide a simmering passion in both searching young men. Sapienza's writing is crisp and clear, and his dialogue—whether at morning prayer or the Rawhide—is dressed with the kind of detail that only comes from first-hand experience. Seventy is a refreshingly honest and earnest examination of a gay man's faith journey that should resonate with many.

(Salvatore Sapienza will read and sign copies of Seventy Times Seven at A Different Light bookstore, 8853 Santa Monica Blvd., on Tuesday, Jan. 23, at 7:30 p.m.) —Christopher Cappiello

At Home with Kate

By Eileen Considine-Meara
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., $24.95

Since her death in 2003, there have been many books published about Katherine Hepburn's life and career, some focusing on her unparalleled film work, others highlighting the mysteries of her personal life, with whispers about lesbian affairs. Eileen Considine-Meara, whose mother Norah was Hepburn's housekeeper for 30 years, offers a particularly personal view of the great actress in At Home with Kate, a series of short anecdotes from the four-time Oscar-winning star's life, embellished with an array of never-before-seen private photos and personal tidbits, including recipes. (Want to know how to make Kate's favorite beet soup?)

At Home is for the Hepburn fan with everything. The book doesn't provide an overview of the actress' life or career, but instead assumes a familiarly with her work and gets right down to the business of sharing delightful and sometimes delicious behind-the-scenes stories, all lovingly told. Shuttling between Kate's longtime Manhattan townhouse and her family's Connecticut estate, we enjoy stories about everyone from Michael Jackson to Sidney Poitier. There was the night Stephen Sondheim came over to fix the VCR. The day Bob Dylan invited Kate to his daughter's graduation party next door. In a particularly moving chapter, Considine-Meara shares a story of the staunchly unreligious Hepburn flying Spencer Tracy's priest to New York for a private memorial Mass in her living room—just Kate, her secretary and Norah. The hardcore fan will also appreciate the photographs, most of them never published before, offering a glimpse into the everyday life of one of the greatest and most famously private of stars.—CC