"The finest work of fiction by any of this country's writers"

Washington Post book critic Jonathan Yardley wrote a series last year where he examined notable books of the past. In his column, he tries to set aside the decades of literary criticism and imagine what he would think of The Great Gatsby if he could have read it fresh in 1925. He examines the compelling, memorable characters and the poetic language, and concludes:

If in 1925 I didn't gasp at that, there would have been something seriously wrong with me. Those words, and the few hundred others that follow as the novel reaches its end, seem to me now -- eight decades after that imagined first reading -- the most beautiful, compelling and true in all of American literature. Each reading of them is a revelation and a gift. If from all of our country's books I could have only one, "The Great Gatsby" would be it.

You can view the whole article, 'Gatsby': The Greatest of Them All on the Washington Post's website