Books like Death Comes for the Archbishop

Oh... my... God. This is beautiful. I'm only halfway through it but I don't care how it ends; every chapter is so complete in itself, every word such unmitigated pleasure that I would be stunned – absolutely floored – if Cather somehow fumbled the ball in the next 150 pages. This is it. The work of a writer with nothing to prove. A writer so humble, her words so transparent, that she seems to disappear behind the curtain of the text, her elegant shadow barely visible in its folds. At age twenty, hearing Nina Simone sing 'Black is the Colour of My True True Love's Hair', I felt my heart couldn't contain that song; it must consume me. Now I feel the same about Death Comes For the Archbishop. It's bigger than me. Will I ever comprehend it? Will I ever be wise enough, my heart big enough, my life lived enough? Also in my twenties, I read I Heard the Owl Call My Name with wonder; now I find that book is like a single episode in this one. Cather's prose is so sensual, her transmitting of physical experience so direct, that I feel I have just returned from a New Mexico all gold and orange and green and baking in stark sunlight as I ride my mule towards shelter behind cool cloister walls. Some books resist analysis, the smart review, the quick response. Many years from now I will still be groping for a sober word to say about this. Out and out love is all I can give it right now. An absolute masterpiece. You ask me, she's second only to Poe in the Great American Writer stakes.