Just finished this amazing story “Death Comes for the Archbishop.” The language is spellbinding, the Arizona setting is portrayed with an amazing beauty and the even the harshest events are told as if whispered in an Abby.
One thing I am interested in hearing thoughts on is the structure of the book. It feels closer to the Canterbury Tales or Don Quixote in its episodic nature than a more modern novel?
Also, this is the first Cather book I have read, and I believe this is considered Cather’s masterpiece, but would certainly like to hear of anyone thinks other books of hers are in the running.
Generally Death Comes for the Archbishop, My Antonia, O Pioneers!, and The Song of the Lark are considered her top tier, so if you’re interested in reading more, I’d start with one of those. Death Comes for the Archbishop is unique in her work for its southwestern setting. The others are set in the Great Plains, where Cather grew up, but they have the same beauty of language and setting. Some of her stories have more defined plots than others, but the episodicness of the stories is definitely a feature, not a bug in most of them.
Shadows on the Rock is also an interesting companion piece to Death Comes for the Archbishop–it was written around the same time, when Cather had become obsessed with Catholicism. Both books are about the settlement of Catholicism in the New World and the people who grew up around these settlements, but Shadows on the Rock is about Quebec instead of New Mexico. Death Comes for the Archbishop is definitely a stronger work overall, but it’s interesting to read them together.