Catholic literature

I had read that The Diary of a Country Priest: A Novel by George Bernanos was a classic of Catholic literature and I just finished reading it. I had thought this would be a nice pious book of the life of a country priest ministering to the pious country folk around him. I could hardly have been more wrong. Instead it is the story of an idealistic young priest and his life ministering in post-enlightenment France with characters so real you can easily imagine the flesh and bones counterparts of them today. Wow, this is truly Catholic literature and the last sentence of the novel nearly knocked me over.