Octogenarian Monica Carly’s Memoir, Island In The Sun: Growing Up In Jamaica 1948-1954, Bursts With Joy And Challenges Of Life In The Caribbean

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On The Table Read Magazine, “the best book magazine in the UK“, in Island In The Sun, Monica Carly recounts her teenage years spent living in Jamaica, still very much under British colonial rule, but with the island’s ambitions of independence in full view.

Island In The Sun

Now aged eighty-seven, author Monica Carly eloquently and vibrantly describes her teenage Caribbean odyssey, in her captivating memoir, Island in the Sun: Growing up in Jamaica 1948-1954.

Monica shares the experience of parent’s deciding to bid farewell to their life in Sheffield to travel via banana boat to a new life in Jamacia. Her memoir immerses readers in a tale of navigating a new Caribbean lifestyle, adolescence and living in a country hungry to break its ties with British Colonial rule. An absorbing account of a young English girl experiencing the joys and facing the challenges of her unique pathway through adolescence, against the backdrop of an island people intent on breaking away from their mother country and taking up an independent role in the world.

Monica’s story, which also shares many of the family’s photographs of the time, doesn’t shy from the grittier and darker issues that embraced Jamacia at the time. Guaranteed to appeal to those who enjoy a biography’s ability to offer readers a new view of the world, this recently published memoir will also fascinate those interested in Caribbean culture and colonial history.

Monica Carly

I was born in Peterborough in 1936, moved to Sheffield aged 8, and then to Jamaica aged 12. I returned to the UK on my own aged 18 in order to attend Bristol University, where I obtained an honours degree in English,  French and Latin, and a teaching qualification. After teaching in secondary schools and then raising a family I took a creative writing course, producing several short stories and some children’s stories.

I describe the joys and challenges of that special time in my life, which began 75 years ago against the backdrop of an island people, still under British colonial rule, who were intent on breaking the ties with their ‘mother country’ to become an independent nation. There are vivid descriptions of this new way of life as we discovered the glorious food, the soaring mountains, idyllic beaches, and wonderful people who were facing many problems with remarkable resilience.

I have also ensured that difficult issues are not avoided, and include topics such as hurricanes, poverty and the historical abhorrent practice of slavery.

In 1991 I made a return visit to Jamaica with my son and met my sister there. We did a tour round the island in a hired car, visiting all the well-known places, which has enabled me to add some colour photographs to the original black and white ones, and which show some of the developments that had taken place since I had left 37 years previously.

-Monica Carly

Find more from Monica Carly now:

Kindle: https://amzn.to/49CGzFt

Paperback: https://amzn.to/49yKSBN

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