An Affair to Remember

Nicely timed to Katharine Hepburn’s 90th birthday on May 12, Christopher Andersen’s tale, An Affair to Remember, thoroughly chronicles the oft-told, rarely analyzed 26-year affair between Hepburn and the married Spencer Tracy. To Andersen’s credit, though a Hepburn fan — he named a daughter Kate — he doesn’t whitewash Tracy’s drinking binges, his violent outbursts, his verbal abuse, and Hepburn’s seemingly masochistic embrace of him. Though Andersen insists that Hepburn wasn’t a victim, that the two brought out the best in each other, his description of her as Tracy’s ”nursemaid” makes you think the book’s subtitle should be Smart Women, Foolish Choices. B+