Seventy Times Seven

By: Salvatore Sapienza

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

“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.

This story had me spellbound from the first sentence.

I found this well-written story so very relatable to my own, personal experience also at age 27 just about a decade earlier in time. As a Protestant seminary student just months short of ordination vows, I too taught students but in a church college attached to the seminary where I studied for my Master of Divinity degree. I came to a very similar decision as Brother Vito but against a fiercely hostile family, church and seminary staff.

I can entirely relate both to all the angst and to all the sexual frustration and naivety of brother Vito. The story is told with lots of humor and a lot of relatable cultural details of the time. I highly recommend this book.

This version of Audiobook comes with a computer generated narration. It is pretty good and the voice is pleasing. I was only aware of artificial narration when it occasionally makes brief pauses mid sentence. The narration did not substantially affect my enjoyment of the story.