The dysfunctional family never ceases to provide ripe material for novelists. From terminal illness and sexual impropriety to elegantly chilly silence, familial angst is well-trodden territory. Jessica Shattuck’s wryly titled debut novel is a fresh foray into this dour landscape.

The book opens as Caroline Dunlap returns home to Concord, Massachusetts, after graduating from Harvard. Behind the groomed lawn and green shutters, the Dunlaps’ home life has unraveled in her absence. Her frail mother, Fran, has decamped to New York after a trip to a mental hospital, which family members discreetly refer to as a " time-out " necessitated by fraying nerves. Caroline’s wisp of a little brother, Eliot, has been ignored as he finishes a peculiar, secretive project that includes maps, papier-mâché creations, and an odd accomplice lurking in the garden shrubs. And her father, Jack, a prickly stoic, hides behind a fusty history-textbook business, Revolutionary War replicas, and a sour demeanor. This is the kind of guy who " single-handedly prevented the town of Concord from building affordable housing for the elderly. "

Caroline’s return home provides a lens into each character’s own brand of combustion reaching its ignition point: dad’s shady involvement with Eliot’s ex-babysitter; mom’s whimpering neglect of her familial obligations; brother’s peculiar, suspect hobbies. And in fact, most unsubtly, the lens is literal; a hack documentary filmmaker, Stephan (pronounced Ste-fahn), has descended on Concord to look into a new, promisingly scandalous topic; his work is tentatively titled The Last WASPS, from Puritans to Preppies. Using Stephan’s camera as its eye, the novel shifts focus from one person to another, teasing out each individual’s plot threads firsthand before moving on to the next person.

With faux French up his sleeve, Stephan has slyly convinced Caroline to wangle access to her family members for his unkind portrait of Concord’s decadent ranks, the dying breed of Wasps. As we dance through a roster of unpleasant social events, The Hazards humorously and aptly digs into the world of Beacon Hill socialites, worn-around-the-edges country clubs, soft-around-the-belly aging frat boys, and vintage money. Country-club friends cackle maliciously behind closed doors, and coo over-demonstratively at gin-fueled public events. Otherwise, silence keeps every mess smoothed over, a " tense, terrible silence. "

Shattuck, herself a Cambridge kid with Harvard and Columbia cred, is at her best when she uses her agile hand coolly to skewer wealthy, Waspy suburban life, in all its glorified asceticism and aggressively upheld frugality. Her language is inventive and enthusiastic. For example, Caroline finds her shabby home funny, " all this opulent decrepitude and self-consciously maintained lack of creative comforts. "

But, ultimately, Shattuck's picture of Waspdom comes off as farcical and overstated, since she relies too often on pat cultural clichés. Jack " has an almost violent distaste for anything, other than cars and property, that smacks of luxury. " Caroline’s great-grandmother, despite her vast inherited wealth, had the " habit of walking around the dining room carpet rather than on it, " in a comical reflection of Protestant frugality.

And the novel reveals its architecture too easily; the foundation is on the outside. The various plot threads start out in four corners and neatly tie together in a pretty bow by the end. Mom meets an impulsive Frenchman and loosens up; Dad does the right thing after a manly indiscretion; Eliot finally gets the hug he desperately needs from mom. The mother is redeemed through the love of a stereotyped Frenchman, the father through the love of a stereotyped Hispanic woman, the son through someone, anyone’s love. And Caroline, having neatly solved everyone’s problems, can walk away and attend to whatever it may be she is interested in.

It’s as if Shattuck mapped out her plot on PowerPoint, struggling over — and ultimately succumbing to — resolution through big-screen drama. With her pretty bow of a naïve, optimistic ending, she weakens what was much more powerful in its bleakness.

Resolution may be the MO in Hollywood, but assuming that Shattuck’s debut effort wasn’t written primarily to be optioned for the silver screen, we would have been better served with more mess, fewer simple endings, and knottier threads. When it comes to portraying familial dysfunction, as a rule, the more hazards, the better.

Jessica Shattuck reads Thursday, February 13, at 7:30 p.m. at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut Street, in Newtonville; Sunday, February 23, at 3 p.m. at Concord Bookstore, 65 Main Street, in Concord; and Thursday, February 27, at 6 p.m. at the Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, in Cambridge.