Can Nothing Save Us? by Irvine Welsh review – US family saga is a late-career triumph

“Why expect unconditional love from somebody you’ve brought into a fucked, dying planet, who then has to sit around and watch you screw it up even more?” So muses twentysomething college dropout Luke Ayrton on his parental lineage as he works the Las Vegas Strip, “comping girls for clubs” in Sin City. His job is to trawl the “plankton” of bacherlorette parties in order to lure the “whales” – rich men willing to spend to try to impress young women. “In this game your sociology skills sharpened,” it’s observed, but beyond the seedy side hustle lie weightier concerns: the matter of his family legacy. Electronic dance music aficionado and aspiring writer Luke is estranged from his Maga-positive Mom and Dad, and now lives with grandparents George and Molly, affluent boomers with a countercultural past. Vietnam vet and retired lawyer George sees himself as a “hippy sellout”, his dream of pursuing human rights advocacy corrupted by real estate deals and entertainment law. Actor Molly’s early theatre and independent cinema success led only to small parts in low-budget film and TV. Grandson Luke is set to inherit their fortune, yet struggles for meaning against a background of disappointment and growing despair: an intergenerational nihilism that deepens like a coastal shelf. This is a bold and ambitious work, in which Welsh deftly shifts point of view with confidence and conviction Irvine Welsh’s 16th novel Can Nothing Save Us? comes as something of a surprise. An epic American family saga, it explores a collective emotional malaise at the heart of a great power in decline. This is a bold and ambitious work, in which Welsh deftly shifts point of view with confidence and conviction: his ability to jump generations and to capture the voices and feelings of his disparate cast of characters is at times quite astonishing. Our author’s way into this garish universe is clearly via his familiarity with the Las Vegas club scene. There’s an early namecheck o…