In a Liverpool torn apart by the Second World War, the 'Rescue Man' takes to saving the wounded from bombed buildings. But can he stop his own life from unravelling?
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.
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PRODUCT INFORMATION
Summary
In a Liverpool torn apart by the Second World War, the 'Rescue Man' takes to saving the wounded from bombed buildings. But can he stop his own life from unravelling?
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.
Description
Rescue Man opens on the eve of the Second World War. With uncertainty in the air as the world seems on the brink of disaster, Liverpool is a city tense in anticipation of the coming conflict. Orphaned as a child and now approaching forty with no prospect of a family of his own, Tom Baines is a man emotionally adrift. Unable to commit to anything, either personal or professional, he is left looking in at life from the outside, with only his fascination for architecture to connect him.The outbreak of war brings a new sense of purpose and unexpected relationships. Baines joins the Rescue Men -retrieving the wounded from bombed buildings.The Blitz is yet in wartime ordinary rules are suspended, risks taken and Baines finds himself caught up in a love affair that is as heady and all-consuming as it is transgressive.With writing that is both immediate and deeply steeped in its time, Anthony Quinn recreates wartime Liverpool with emotional intensity in this powerful story of love found and lost.
Awards
Winner of Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2010
Short-listed for Desmond Elliott Prize 2009
Critic Reviews
“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 "A real page-tuner" Mail on Sunday "Quinn has a cinematic eye for narrative scope ... Like all good novels this book tells us something new" Spectator "Tells the slowly unfolding story of Baines' journey of self-discovery with great subtlety" Sunday Times
About the Author
Anthony Quinn was born in Liverpool in 1964. Since moving to London in 1986 he has written about film and books for a number of newspapers and magazines, including The Independent, Daily Telegraph, New York Times and Mail on Sunday. For three years he was the arts editor at Harpers & Queens. Since 1998 he has been film critic of The Independent. In 2006 he was one of the judges of the Man Booker Prize. He is currently wine correspondent for Esquire magazine.
Back Cover
'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. Equally remarkable is the Victorian prose of Eames's journal. Its every line convinces' Observer 'An excellent debut...a moving and powerfully told story of late coming-of-age and redemptive love' Literary Review 'The story has the resonant simplicity of a poem... The Rescue Man turns the ongoing frenzy of construction and destruction [of Liverpool] into a quietly powerful metaphor of how we grow up' Guardian 'Thematically rich and masterfully constructed' TLS 'Brilliant...an involving meditation on passion, history and architecture' Daily Mail 'Quinn has a cinematic eye for narrative scope... Like all good debut novels this book tells us something new' Spectator Liverpool, 1939. Lonely historian Tom Baines is at work on a study of the city's architectural past but 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 a 'rescue man', saving the dead and dying from the ruins of buildings, but the love affair he embarks on soon leads him into a very different kind of danger.
