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Seventy Times Seven
by Salvatore Sapienza
| List Price: |
$15.95 |
Unavailable for
purchase at this time |
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Paperback
Publisher: Haworth Press
"Give me chastity and self-restraint, but not just right now."
—The Confessions of Saint Augustine "Jesus instructed us to forgive those who have wronged us seventy times seven times," Brother Vito Fortunato teaches the boys in his high school religion class, but it's Vito himself who has the most trouble with forgiveness: trying to forgive the Church, the gay community, and most of all, himself. Just a few months from his final vows as a Brother in the Catholic Church, Vito finds himself at a crossroads, torn between his spirituality and his sexuality as a fully out and proud gay man. Will a summer of volunteer work at an AIDS center in San Francisco—and a love affair with Gabriel, a recently divorced landscaper—help Vito decide his calling—and his future? Seventy Times Seven is a poignant, sexy, funny, and romantic novel set in the early 1990s about a young man's struggle to integrate his religious beliefs with his sexual desires. The gap between sexuality and spirituality is punctuated throughout the novel with quotes from the Scripture, and from song lyrics from Prince and Madonna, artists who merged the two worlds in provocative and groundbreaking fashion. Vito struggles too, with the idealism that drives his desire to change the archaic ways of the Catholic Church and its views on AIDS and homosexuality. An excerpt from Seventy Times Seven: "Come on, let's go in," Tim implored outside the Christopher Street video store. "It'll be a riot. I know you're a Brother, but you don't have to do anything, just watch. But, whatever you do, don't make me laugh. They're hardcore in there." Tim has always been able to persuade me to take risks. He took me into my first gay bar, Uncle Charlie's in the Village, when I was seventeen years old (the legal drinking age in New York was eighteen at the time, so we didn't look out of place). Two years later, we snorted coke off of his Barney's credit card in the bathroom of the Roxy. He later was a part of my first threesome experience with some guy we met at the Spike. There was one risk, however, that Tim was unsuccessful in persuading me to take, and that was leaving religious life. Taking me into the video store that night required little effort on his part. Sal Sapienza's first novel, Seventy Times Seven, is an entertaining and enlightening look at the struggle many gay men experience as their try to reconcile their religion with their sexual natures.
| Customer Reviews: |
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| A WONDERFUL READ! |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Seventy Times Seven is a wonderful read. One encounters spiritual conflict and self doubt, sexual tension and love in the context of a gay Brother who has yet to take his final vows in the Catholic Church. Vito, the conflicted Brother is a fully formed character. The author does not bash the Catholic Church, but rather addresses its shortfalls -- all in the context of Vito's self doubt as to his true calling and his search for how to do God's work.
As a younger Brother, Vito has difficulty relating to older gay writers -- a potentially interesting insight into the author himself. The book is balanced in the telling of its story. Characters are believable and by-in-large not one dimensional. The ending one might predict, but I read this novel believing Vito's choice of finding his place doing God's work could go either way -- in secular life or as a Brother in the Church
I enjoyed this novel greatly and recommend it highly.
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| FUN READ |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Saw alot of myself in this booK, couldn't put it down. Very insightful. when's the next one coming?
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| Stereotypical, biased and flawed |
| Customer Rating: 2 out of 5 |
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When I read the sample first chapter on Amazon, I was engaged enough to buy the book. That chapter was hardly a window on what followed.
The protagonist, Vito, is a young (always an emphasis on "young") gay brother in a religious order in the throes of conflict between his spiritual longing and his carnal urges. His circle of friends includes dedicated clubbers who act out every gay stereotype from the self-centered preening of clothing and branded material possessions to the worship of gay icons (Streisand and Madonna) and perpetual emphasis on physical perfection. Its tiresome eye-rolling piety masks a cloying shallowness in character after character.
Most repugnant of all is the author's repeated bashing of older gay men ("gay is about being young and looking good"). He goes out of his way to express resentment of older gay men for "causing" the AIDS epidemic.
The book has its moments, particularly the development of Vito's love affair. However, those moments are marred by abysmal editing: endless typographical and grammatical errors, even an uncorrected font change.
"Seventy Times Seven" was a disappointment, its gushing raves notwithstanding.
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| A moving read |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
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Can an openly gay Brother stay true to God and to himself?
That is the spiritual and sexual dilemma that propels Sal Sapienza's novel, "Seventy Times Seven.''
Set in the early 1990s, Sapienza illuminates with sweet elegance and piercing insight the challenges of 27-year-old brother Victor "Vito" Fortunato who teaches religion to 25 freshman at Mount Saint Vincent High, a Catholic school in Brooklyn.
Fortunato isn't your typical brother. Instead of cloaking his sexuality, Vito unleashes it. He celebrates his gay pride. He likes to drink with his guy friends at the bars, dances shirtless. He wears Obsession the cologne and sleeps naked in his comforter. He's even been a third party in a threesome when he was younger.
Basically, Vito is your fun and foxy, good-natured Italian progressive Brother. He hopes that his forward-mentality will change the staid and tradition-driven Catholic church once he becomes a full-fledged priest.
Months before he is to take the final vows to become that priest, Vito decides to volunteer at an AIDS service center in San Francisco. There he meets a divorced landscaper named Gabriel and falls in love. They engage in a romantic and passionate affair and Victor must decide how he really wants to live his life.
The power of the book is how Vito copes with his commitment to God and to himself. By being true to himself, does he betray his higher power? Or by committing "holy" to God, does he dishonor himself?
The book serves as Vito's spiritual guide, as he questions which path to take. He wants to bridge his two worlds and feel complete, fulfilled and devoted to each.
But the book is also the road of forgiveness, which echoes the book's title. In the book's beginning, Vito teaches his class of 14 students, to forgive those who have wronged us which is taken from the Biblical passage.
Besides the internal spiritual tug of war Vito struggles with, I also enjoyed the pop references sprinkled throughout the book which harken back to the early nineties which Sapienza has fun paying tribute to.
We see mentions of a new Fox show "Beverly Hills 90120" and NBC's former "Saved By The Bell." Sapienza also uses songs from Madonna (Like A Prayer) as a literary tool to show the reader Vito's state of mind. (Who better than Madonna can personify the intersection of sexuality and spirituality and that you can have a little of both.) And that is what Vito captures in the book. That it's okay to be gay and religious. You don't have to give up one to have the other in your life.
There aren't many novels that truely explore the state of homosexuality in the Catholic Church the way Sapienza does.
He doesn't crucify the church but he explains through Vito's eyes what is wrong with the Church and how it needs to change to better encompass and represent all of its members, gay or not.
Seventy Time Seven is a tender and touching read by first-time author Sapienza. Gay and religious fiction would benefit with more of his spiritual tales.
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| A Thoroughly Satisfying Read |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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Seventy Times Seven was a tough read for me. As a somewhat bitterly ex-catholic gay boy who has been battling HIV for eleven years, I found that many parts of Sal Sapienza's novel hit very close to home. After I reached the end, though, I recognized that the journey had been well worth it, despite the emotional bumps I hit along the way.
The story's main character is Vito, a cute gay Italian boy who is just getting ready to take final vows in his Catholic brotherhood. The book chronicles his struggle to incorporate his religious calling with his more sensual, secular urgings. To be honest, I liked Vito. I wanted to sleep with Vito, but I didn't identify with Vito - not one bit. I empathized much more with his best friend Tim, a light-hearted hedonist who seems to take great delight in leading his conflicted friend astray. My guess is that most gay guys who, like me, reached young adulthood in the eighties will also more closely identify with Tim. To me, he is more or less the embodiment of gay eighties culture - chastened somewhat by the looming threat of AIDS, but still trying to live life to the fullest.
And speaking of gay eighties cultural references - Sapienza uses them liberally, but not gratuitously, throughout the book. He weaves the pop songs and mega-stars from that time right into the story, using them as metaphors for the various issues that Vito struggles with along the way. This gives the novel the quality of a modern-day parable, and though I'm sure I'm not the only reader who wanted to shake Vito by the shoulders from time to time and scream "Are you out of your mind?", I found his crisis, as a whole, to be genuine and believable.
A fine first novel by Sal Sapienza. It had a nice, steady pace, well developed characters and just enough pathos to engage readers emotionally without carrying them into the realm of soap opera. Seventy Times Seven roughed me up a bit emotionally, but in the end it left me feeling hopeful about myself and about life in general. Can one ask any more of a novel than that?
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