Oranges: a novella for puppets Alexander Forbes,
with illustrations by Natalia Vanessa
Celista, BC: Gracesprings Collective, 2010
Oranges is a new novella by Alexander Forbes. It is about two puppets who do not know they are puppets and are therefore able to drive successfully across a good part of British Columbia. This tribute to Samuel Beckett is illustrated with 14 drawings by Natalia Vanessa (who also did the dazzling cover art) and it should delight all readers looking for warm humour in a world that takes itself too seriously. It might just give readers a glimpse into another world.
“Alexander Forbes, a national treasure, takes us on a rollicking road trip. . . . This gem of a novella is . . . a truly outstanding work from one of Canada’s finest!”
- Bette Shippam (University of British Columbia)
“Samuel Beckett would have gotten a laugh and a kick out of how some aspects of his novel Watt are transformed in a distinctively Forbesian fashion, in particular the charmingly eccentric journey of those puppet characters Sam and Ralph and their encounters with various fictional realities.”
- Peter Murphy (Reconstructing Beckett: Language for Being in Samuel Beckett’s Fiction; Beckett’s Dedalus: Dialogical Engagements with Joyce in Beckett’s Fiction)
“A journey to nowhere, nonsensically undertaken by two nonpersons, is filled with Forbes’ characteristic hilarity, poetry, and pathos.” - Peter Gimpel (Twilight with Halfmoon Rising, The Carnevalis of Eusebius Asch, Professor Gansa’s Dream) 
from Oranges:
When we entered his apartment, however, Sam suddenly stopped even his humming, and appeared almost thoughtful. Sam then turned to me and . . . explained that he had returned not only in the hope of commencing his long journey, but to recover something he had forgotten.
What a thing to say! Nobody returns for something forgotten.
