Rating: 3/5
Heidi was the small Swiss daughter of Adelheid and Tobias, a likely couple who both quite sadly and unfortunately died, leaving their little baby with her aunt Deta. Four years later, when their small girl was only five, Deta had no other relative for her than the Alm-Uncle, a solitary, grumpy old grandad with what he hoped was no relation with the villagers and other people at all. Before, he had perched an old wooden shack known as the Alm-Hut on the top of the Alps, and there he was obliged to live, away from all the chattering townsfolk down at the village by the bottom of the mountain. The unaware grandfather, at the time when Deta and Heidi arrived at the top of the ginormous hill for the delivery of the happy child, was sitting on a bench outside the hut that he called home, smoking on a large pipe. When he was told of the coming reasoning, he was left shortly afterwards without any words in the matter himself by the unfaithful aunt with the small child at his feet. Unsure of what to do, he arranged a bed for Heidi on the top of the hay loft near the top of the ladder, where one could stare out one’s window at the star, and hear the roaring of the three fir trees gathered outside of the Alm-Hut. The child was perfectly contented and soon enough formed a gradual friendship with the Alm-Uncle. When the inside emotions and feelings of the grandfather were revealed, the two were of a likely correspondance. As Heidi grew up, life on the Alps with the grandfather became better and more fun, and the little girl befriended many from the mountains and the village. Peter, the goatherd boy, soon grew to be Heidi’s best friend, and the only one she knew until she met his grandmother, or ‘the’ grandmother, as was described in the story. The grandmother was an old, blind woman gradually nearing her death, who all day would cower in the corner of her dusty shack, under her outing shawl and thin blankets, next to the holes of draughty wind that came through the wooden planks and wonky nailed boards. The goatherd’s mother, Brigida, was a lively and poor woman who shared the shack with Peter and an old grandmother such as the one, and soon became friends with Heidi too. But Heidi had other friends as well – quite a few; and these were the goats, Big Turk and all the other grizzly ones, and Snowhopper and Thistlefinch, little snuggly ones; but all of them were the best kind of goat, and quite especially so were Swanli and Barli, I believe they were called. Heidi was never lonely.
But one day Deta arrived back again, and said that she had not expected her neice to stay with the grandfather any longer, and was able to take her to Frankfurt to meet a wealthy family she had met there, who beheld a lame twelve-year-old girl called Clara, who spent her long and lonely days in a wheelchair. “I shan’t go,” Heidi had retorted, much to Deta’s surprise, “and only will if grandfather comes too, otherwise I shan’t go!” But the angry little Heidi was outnumbered by tall, strict Deta, and she was taken by the arm and led towards the train, which shortly arrived in Frankfurt, where she should be staying. A large house with a lame girl outside awaited her.
But then terrible things happened. There were ghosts in the house, which turn out to be an ill Heidi, sleepwalking, who is homesick and greatly unsettled for the Alm-Hut. Soon Clara’s father, Mr Sesemann, claimed that they must do something about this…
Read on to find out what happened next…
I found the book a little more boring towards the beginning, but as I got further through the book, I got more into it and discovered that once the plot was on the roll, it began to get better and better. I thought that the grandmother was quite an interesting yet unnecessary character, still, though, my favourite in the book, because of how her personality changed during the process of each chapter. I found that soon I was pondering continuously over whether I should read the next few pages of a new chapter, and when I did found I couldn’t stop! Towards the beginning, however, it was far too slow and a little boring. But Clara and the Sesemanns and the grandmother- and mama are involved, it begins to get better. If you read it and feel as though you should put it down, don’t! Wait until the end.