In the opening chapter of Sanam Mahloudji’s dynamic first novel, marital strife, intoxication and an arrest for solicitation are merely the prelude to a scene in which $30,000-worth of jewels and watches are flung from a sparkling Aspen ski slope.

The woman responsible for most of that is Shirin, a Houston-based events organiser holidaying with her extended family. Consistently provocative and self-dramatising, Shirin makes a kind of performance art out of her snowballing midlife crisis, but hers is just one of five contrasting perspectives from which this matrilineal saga is told.

The Persians spans three generations of the Valiat family – wealthy, well-connected Iranians who have largely been living in the US since the Islamic revolution. Thanks to Shirin’s late sister, Seema, her niece, Bita, and the two Valiat women who remained in Tehran – her mother, Elizabeth, and Niaz, the daughter Shirin left behind – the book contains a multitude of moods and dramas. Twentysomething Bita, for instance, is quitting law school in New York in search of a life that feels more authentic. In Tehran, Niaz has been risking her freedom, looking for meaning in the city’s underground rave scene. Even Seema, a spectral presence, has much to say as she contemplates her unfulfilled journalistic ambitions.

While their voices provide ballast to the chaos that Shirin trails in her wake, none can compete with her for intensity and verve, except for snobby matriarch Elizabeth, whose journey over the course of the novel will prove the most radical, hinging on a secret passion that daringly crossed class lines and retains its power to astound decades later (one of Mahloudji’s most memorable descriptions conjures empowered, octogenarian seduction, creaky knees and all).

Threading these stories together is the notion that each woman has in turn been failed by her mother. They are also burdened by their very name, marking them out as descendants of the fictional Babak Ali Khan Valiat, a predictably flawed hero known as the Great Warrior, whose money still largely defines them.

Really, though, it’s the revolution that is to blame for their profound and, it must be said, highly entertaining dislocation. It rendered them all exiles – not least those who chose to stay. In a punchy snub to the conventions of the American immigrant story, Bita, chatting to her therapist, quotes her auntie Shirin: “We didn’t come here for a better life. We left a better life”. A life no longer possible in a homeland that has become unrecognisable.

What keeps this expansive group narrative broadly on track is the ticking clock of Shirin’s court date back in Aspen. She is unrepentant but, social scandal aside, the chance that she might be deported back to Iran adds peril.

The Persians is a novel full of outrageous laughter, retaining its fire even in tender moments, and relishing the challenge of locating beauty and complexity within outright gaudiness. If it falls short, it is in its depiction of contemporary Iran, which lacks the solidity of Mahloudji’s evocation of the pre-revolutionary country. (Mahloudji herself was born in Tehran, but left when the Shah fell.) However, this is, perhaps, a life-affirming reminder that the imperfect place the Valiats yearn for, with its fragrant courtyards where poetry (some of it written by women) and wine once flowed, endured far longer than the Islamic Republic yet has.

• The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji is published by 4th Estate (£16.99).
To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply