When it comes to novels about the modern family, nobody does it quite like the Americans. From John Cheever and Richard Yates to Jonathan Franzen, Jeffrey Eugenides and this year's women's prize for fiction winner AM Homes, no one can touch them for their portrayal of the dark underbelly of this supposedly model institution. In Between Days might well be Pennsylvania-born author Andrew Porter's first novel (though it is preceded by the short story collection The Theory of Light and Matter) but it proves his credentials as a writer worthy of a place in this illustrious hall of fame.

Once one of Houston's most promising architects, Elson Harding has failed to fulfil his potential and his recently divorced wife of 30 years, Cadence, never even got started, trading a career for a life as a wife and mother. Richard, their grown son, is a talented poet, but he can't quite bring himself to commit to a degree so is working in a coffee shop by day and partying at night.

Chloe, his younger sister, is away at college on the east coast, but one rainy night she flies home; there has been an "incident" and she's been suspended for the rest of the semester, possibly expelled. She refuses to tell her family what happened, but the damage is already done as the lives of all four quickly begin to disintegrate.

Eminently moving but never sentimental, Porter's powerful tale of a dysfunctional family at breaking point is plotted with the suspense of a well-paced thriller.