Keiran Goddard

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

Liam Collins

 I hate to think of it, I hate to think of Patrick filling in all the same fucking forms our parents had to fill in, begging the state for ten quid off your council tax and then getting the form sent back because you used blue ink instead of black. Patrick is always spouting something about the state, about how it should be, about what it should give. I don't get it. All the state ever did for us when we were growing up was watch us and hurt us. I don't know why he thinks it can save him now. He's got the wrong idea.

Always the smart-arse. When I first found out I was pregnant, still a kid myself in some ways, I told him I was scared and that under no circumstances should he start making any of his so-called fucking witty comments about it. He promised. A promise that lasted about three hours. But I was glad when the jokes came. That was when I knew we'd be alright. 

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