Liverpool, 1939. Lonely historian Tom Baines is at work on a study of the city's architectural past but the ominous news from Europe, together with his burgeoning friendship with Richard, a young photographer, and his beautiful wife, Bella, are proving a distraction.
When the bombings begin, Tom joins up as 'rescue man', retrieving the wounded and dying from the ruins of buildings, but the love affair he embarks on soon leads him into a very different kind of danger.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9780099531937
Number of pages: 416
Weight: 287 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 25 mm
Thoughtful, beautifully observed and utterly compelling - Independent on Sunday
A fascinating novel - very moving and beautifully nuanced and observed - it beguiles with a tremendous slow-burning power - William Boyd
Brilliant...an involving meditation on passion, history and architecture - Daily Mail
A love letter to Liverpool...ambitiously conceived... He has perfect pitch when it comes to the prose of each period, so much so that when I started the novel, I had the uncanny sense that what I was reading must have been salvaged from the 1940s. Its every line convinces - Kate Kellaway, Observer
The story has the resonant simplicity of a poem... The Rescue Man turns the ongoing frenzy of construction and destruction into a quietly powerful metaphor of how we grow up - Guardian
I loved this story of Tom Baines and found it hard to put down. A rather slow beginning (perhaps echoing the slow start to the war?) eases the reader into the era and the well-drawn accents of Liverpool. Tom’s... More
Tom Baines arrives in Liverpool at the start of the 2nd world war, ostensibly to study and make a record of Liverpool’s architectural history. He finds the diary of a young Victorian architect who trained under... More
The Rescue Man is a novel which combines two individually thoroughly absorbing stories.
The title alludes to the dual roles of the main character, Tom Baines. His interest in architecture brings him the job of...
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