He Used to Do Dangerous Things

About

A grieving woman tells her counsellor increasingly elaborate and contradictory accounts of the night her partner died...

A solitary pensioner, cut off from the world in the depths of lockdown, resorts to sitting in his apartment block's meter room to watch the electricity gauges surge with life...

A travelling vending machine operator takes his goldfish with him on his long-haul journeys to alleviate its separation anxiety...

The characters in Gaia Holmes' debut fiction collection adopt complex and ingenious mechanisms for processing a world that is at once too close and too far removed, needing to feel the presence of others, whilst also being overwhelmed by it. Whether it's the trauma of the pandemic and its many isolations, or the chaotic, draining lives of loved ones or neighbours, these stories explore the ingenuity of people striving to rebuild themselves, fortify their defences and, most courageously, connect. 

Bringing with her the open-hearted lyricism, intense textures and inherent strangeness that set her poetry apart, Holmes arrives at the short story as the finished article: a master chronicler of 21st century Britain.

WINNER OF THE ARTS FOUNDATION AWARD FOR PLACE WRITING

Read Surge from He Used to Do Dangerous Things. 
 

Press

‘The magical, the ghostly, the surreal often irrupt into short stories, even those which, at first glance, seem straightforwardly realist in tone and subject matter. This is certainly the case in Gaia Holmes’s excellent debut collection, He Used to Do Dangerous Things, where a gritty social realism mingles freely with magical thinking. There are recognisable stories here of homelessness, lockdown loneliness, domestic abuse, environmental destruction – but all of them are touched with dream-like imagery.’ - Morning Star

‘This is an excellent collection of varied stories that show people finding ways of coping and helping each other through difficult situations. Often surreal, sometimes amusing and occasionally dark, these are stories that you will want to read again.’ - Crafty Green Poet 

'He Used to Do Dangerous Things secures Holmes’ move from poetry to short fiction as a success… [It] is a compelling, unusual and imaginative collection that twists its way through darkness, malevolence, warmth and connection. Holmes showcases the rich multiplicity the short story collection is capable of conveying. - The Manchester Review