Keiran Goddard

Hourglass

FIVE FRIENDS.
FIVE LIVES.
COUNTLESS HOPES.

Patrick, Shiv, Rian, Oli and Conor grew up together. They played together, skipped school together, and dreamt of everything they'd do with their lives.

Now they are thirty, and only Rian has made it out of the estate and moved away to another city, but his money doesn't stop him clinging to a vision of the past that is quickly slipping away. Oli is fading by the day, drinking and snorting his way through endless boredom, while Conor has a baby on the way and a business plan he hopes will change everything. Patrick and Shiv are as in love as ever, but even they are rocked when an old secret opens up new wounds...

Bold, ambitious and stylistically striking, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning asks what happens when all the things we expect from our lives end up not happening. It lays bare the ways that place and circumstance shape us, explores the redeeming and transforming beauty of friendship and examines the true limits of hope and forgiveness.

I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning

'Beautiful and very funny' Brett Anderson 'This book glows in the heart of the reader' Max Porter 'This book is such a sneaky head f*ck - an epic poem in an ancient style about the brutalities of modern love, a masculine interrogation of feminine heartbreak, a really beautiful way to spend an evening' Lena Dunham The second time you came, we went from bar to bar to bar. It made the city feel smaller. Like a map we were folding to the size of a stamp. We were good at that. We could have fit an entire universe inside a matchbox. Love builds up little by little and that's why it makes people reach for words like root and sediment and other words to do with rocks and trees. But what about the dismantling? Does it happen that way too? Because it feels like it is happening much, much faster. And I am reaching for words like landslide and like wave and like storm ... Exquisitely crafted, wildly imaginative and as darkly funny as it is moving, Hourglass is a revolutionary love story. It turns time upside down, combs the intimate wreckage of heartbreak for something universal, and asks what it means to lose what you love. 'Hourglass will stay with me for a long time. Hypnotic' Lemn Sissay 'Evocative, ecstatic and saturated with off-kilter wit' Alexandra Kleeman

Keiran Goddard

About

Books

Join the club