Feel free to contact me about Voting Day, The Naked Irish, The Naked Swiss or potential work projects. I have a wide range of experience in journalism, communications, public speaking and translation (French and German).
Email: clareodeach (at) gmail.com
Twitter: @clareodeaz
Love your new-look blog, Clare. I’m about to download The Naked Swiss for my Kindle ready for the long weekend we have here. Congratulations on all the super reviews and media coverage.
Thank you so much, Safia. I noticed you were on a blogging break and I hope it means you are making lots of progress on the writing front. Have a great Swiss-themed weekend. Beyond the call of duty for you to read a book about Switzerland when living in the UAE but I won’t stop you!
It was so well-researched and informative. Really enjoyed it, Clare. And no writing, I’m afraid, but working so hard am counting the hours, not days, until the end of the academic year!
Thank you for the feedback Safia. I’m touched that you read my book and glad you enjoyed it. Hope you don’t crumble under the workload. Have a relaxing well-earned summer break.
Dear Clare O’Dea,
I just learned your name when I was searching for articles about the children’s classic HEIDI by Johanna Spyri and was led to your swissinfo article, https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/heidi-looks-back-on-a-life-less-ordinary/6536244?moreComments=true#comment_59c047e30cf2dafc4533f55b, about someone named Heidi Schwaller, who, according the article, was supposed to have been the real-life inspiration for the girl in the book. I’m extremely puzzled about how this information came to be accepted as fact, when it is widely known that HEIDI was first published in 1880, long before this Heidi Schwaller was born (the Schwaller of the article was said to have been age 92 in 2008). I’m even more puzzled that the erroneous information in the article appears never to have been challenged to this day (some nine years later). I am very curious about the circumstances whereby you met Schwaller and conducted the interview. Had you no familiarity with the book before this? Was Schwaller perhaps suffering from dementia, or just putting over an outrageous con? And was there no fact-checking of the story?
Dear JoAnne, thanks for getting in touch. I’m sorry that this article caused confusion. It was written as an April Fool’s piece (common enough practice in Europe) and I made up everything in it, knowing that the years did not add up etc. I don’t work for swissinfo any more but I’ll ask them if they could put a little explanation at the end of the text to avoid this kind of thing happening again. Sorry for leading you up the garden path!
Oh wow! Thank you so much for clearing that up! Of course — the piece is dated April 1 — I never even noticed that. Probably it was more obvious when it first came out — interesting how searching the semi-archival internet can cloud the intent/origin! I do think swissinfo would do well to put in some kind of hint, at least, about the context… even if it’s a pointed suggestions to “notice the date on this piece”! 😉 Anyway, thanks for replying! I feel a little chagrined…but also relieved to know it was a deliberate joke. 🙂
it was beutiful your story of heidi i enjoyed
Thank you for saying so!
Your book jumped off the shelf at me in Payot yesterday! Well-informed and fun to read! Thanks, from a Swiss-Irishman from Fribourg…
Thanks for the positive feedback, Patrick. Those books are very well trained to jump off the shelf like that 😉
Dear Clare i am living in a small town called Coimbatore in India, i came to know about the Novel Heidi in 2017 it was a heart touching story .I started to admire Heidi and included her in my own family Did you really met her and talk to her?? Do you have a real picture of Heidi schwaller ?
Dear Sathiya, sorry to disappoint you bur I did not meet Heidi. The article you read was published on April 1st and was meant to be a joke. The dates don’t add up and Heidi was not based on a real person anyway. I made it all up! Thanks for getting in touch, Clare
And I just fell for that April fool’s joke in March! 😀 Find the dates strange, but ignore them. I was more interrested in if Heidi & Peter have great great great grandchildren and what was Peter’s Surname? And what happend to Clara? 🙂