Keiran Goddard will be in conversation with Bookseller Crow on Thursday 2nd May, 7.30pm. Tickets are £5 and include a drink.
I SEE BUILDINGS FALL LIKE LIGHTNING is a moving and lyrical novel about five friends whose lives are shaped by the brutality of a world that doesn’t value them – and the very different choices they make. 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. Praise for Hourglass: ‘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
Keiran Goddard grew up in Shard End, Birmingham in a working-class family. He is the author of one poetry pamphlet, two full-length poetry collections and the novel Hourglass. His debut collection was shortlisted for the Melita Hume Prize, he was the runner up in the William Blake Prize and Hourglass was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott prize. He speaks internationally on issues related to social change and currently develops research on workers’ rights, the future of work, automation and trade unionism through his role at the Alex Ferry Foundation.
‘A virtuosic and devastating exploration of the relationships that bind us, and the places that always call us back.’ Sophie Mackintosh
‘Intimate with its surprises, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning has an honesty that shows us how to love one another and hold on to what matters most’ Tice Cin
‘This heartfelt, gut-wrenching novel confirms Goddard as one of the best writers of our time’ Lucia Osborne-Crowley
‘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
Join us at the Crow Salon for a wonderful evening when novelist Kerry Andrew and Leah Broad discuss their latest books with one another. It’ll be a book reading and signing, as well as a relaxed chat about their common link of music, composing and the importance of listening and hearing.
Leah Broad is an award-winning writer, presenter and broadcaster, and author of the critically acclaimed Quartet: How Four Women Challenged the Musical World. Quartet won the 2024 Royal Philharmonic Society Prize for Storytelling, a 2023 Presto Books of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2023. It has been hailed as ‘a new kind of music biography’ (The New York Review of Books) and ‘a stellar work of social and music history’ (Kirkus Reviews). As a journalist Leah won the 2015 Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism, and since becoming a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker in 2016 she is frequently on the BBC discussing music and history. Leah holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Kerry Andrew is a London-based musician, and author. Their latest book, We Are Together Because: A novel of siblings, sex and the end of the world starts as a sensual summer drama and very quickly becomes about our own survival, asking us what is truly important in life, and how far we’ve strayed from our place in a more fluid, vibrant, natural world.
Kerry’s debut novel, Swansong, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2018 and her second Skin in 2021. They made their short story debut on BBC Radio 4 in 2014 with One Swallow and was shortlisted for the 2018 BBC National Short Story Award. Kerry is the winner of four British Composer Awards and is best known for their experimental vocal, choral and music-theatre work, often based around themes of community, landscape and myth. They sing with Juice Vocal Ensemble and has released two albums with her band You Are Wolf: Hawk to the Hunting Gone (2014), a collection of avian folk-songs re-interpreted, and Keld (2018), inspired by freshwater folklore.
Tickets £5 (includes a drink)