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

The Scottish author focuses on gun culture and generational conflict in this darkly satirical tale about a great power in decline “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 o...

By Jake Arnott