Catherine McCarthy’s ‘A Moonlit Path of Madness’ is my latest read of 2025.
It took me a while to finish, but that’s not the book’s fault; life’s been chaotic. My wife gave it to me as a Christmas gift, along with a year’s worth of other books. And boy, does she know my taste in literature.
The story – set at the turn of the 20th century – follows Grace, whose mentally ill mother has passed away. Her brother inherits the family home in the US, where Grace lives with her servant. But her parents have left her another house on the Welsh coast. Hoping to leave her mother’s madness behind, Grace sets off for Wales to begin a new life. But escaping ghosts, real or metaphorical, is never that easy.
The story is dark and brooding, taking time to build the atmosphere. Being half English and half Welsh, I loved the damp, moisture-in-the-sea-air setting. You could almost taste the salt from the waves. Grace’s journey is haunting and relevant to our modern era. ‘A Moonlit Path…’ examines how we viewed mental health in the not-too-distant past. In doing so, the novel encourages reflection on how we face these issues today. McCarthy also creates a sense of fate’s inescapability, reminding me of Stephen King. It’s the type of story where you sense how it will end but hope things might turn out fine.
Haunting, beautiful, tragic.
If you enjoy slow-burn gothic fiction, this one’s for you.
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