Sina: A Novel by the Author of Heidi

by Johanna Spyri, Anna Lisa Ohm (Translator)

Johanna Spyri, best known for her iconic Heidi, sends another young heroine into the world, this time to face the challenges of adulthood and professional life. Sina Normann leaves her close-knit alpine community to become one of the first women to attend medical school at the University of Z�rich. Along her chosen path she must confront her family's fears, her instructors' prejudices, and the demands of her own heart. Published not long after women were first admitted to the University of Z�rich, the novel is one of the first works in German to present female students seriously rather than as objects of humor. In her introduction, Anna Lisa Ohm argues that Sina may have been intended as a sequel to Heidi.

211 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1884

About the author

Johanna Spyri was a Swiss author of children's stories, best known for Heidi. Born Johanna Louise Heusser in the rural area of Hirzel, Switzerland, as a child she spent several summers in the area around Chur in Graubünden, the setting she later would use in her novels.

Reviews

[The Library Lady · Rating 1 out of 5]

Let me start this by saying that, sorry dear friends of the Maud Hart Lovelace list, but I didn't read The Tomes* till I was an adult. When I was a kid Heidi is the book I was obsessed with. I re-enacted the story with my dolls, pretended that a big rock in the park was the Alm, etcetera, etcetera.

So I have a very hard time believing that this awful book was written by Madame Spyri. Perhaps the translator (who is clearly a Spyri scholar and has lots of information about her in the prologue) is just not a very good translator. Translating a literary work into another language and making it readable is a lot harder than it seems.

But sorry, I just can't believe this book is any better in the original German. It is herky-jerky, with minimal dialogue and minimal plot, and reads more like an outline of a book than an actual story.

And yes, it may have been revolutionary for the heroine to study medicine, but she gives up on it, and turns to a conventional job, teaching. And all we get about her years of school teaching is that she isn't allowed to associate with the students out of class, she puts up with it for 7 years, and then suddenly leaves!

The ending is absurd, and if you want to count this a spoiler fine. She suddenly is romanced by the mean doctor who was against her in medical school, and is much older, and suddenly adores her. And to make it even creepier, his son (who was her classmate)clearly had a thing for her back in the day. Ick, ick,ick.

The translator and many other Spyri scholars sneer at Heidi Grows Up and its sequel
Heidi's Children, and think that THIS book was meant to be a sequel. If so, I'm glad it doesn't have the title character as "Heidi," and frankly Mr Tritten's sequels are a lot more fun and a lot more readable than this, and if you're a Heidi fan, go for those instead.

*The Tomes are the Betsy-Tacy series, and I adore them!

[Kelly Hager]

It's no Heidi.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting glimpse at the tensions between career and romantic life for nineteenth-century women. And while I don't know if Spyri intended this, we get an ardent defense of nursing as a legitimate discipline and career path.