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 the 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.

'A virtuosic and devastating exploration of the relationships that bind us, and the places that always call us back. Tender and fierce in turn, Goddard writes about class and friendship with the deftest of touches' Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure


'Keiran Goddard can make you laugh and weep in the same paragraph. This is such a humane, beautiful novel about being from a place you can neither leave nor stay in' Heather Parry, author of Orpheus Builds a Girl


'Enraging, enthralling and ultimately heart-breaking' Aidan Cottrell-Boyce, author of The End of Nightwork


'The language is swaggering, the character development deeply subtle ... genuinely beautiful' Niamh Campbell, author of We Were Young


'One of the most beautiful novels I've read in a very long time, full of rare elegance, sorrow, wit and warmth, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning tells the story of what's left when dreaming feels impossible' Ali Millar, author of The Last Days