Ok, at a second take, it seems that Joyce Carol Oats is facinated by Dostoevski. She gives him high praise for what i believe to be a "badly formated" book.
Example Of Bad Formatting - Constantly, the author will stop his story to tell us something, which shows me he is incapable of relaying this information in the actual story, which i find hard to believe. He also tends to start telling us about something, and then say we will come to it later. Sometimes the story seems like multiple stories all wrapped into one and connected merely by common people.
However, i do like that Joyce Carol Oats states that this novel is Point/Counterpoint. And that most of the charectors move from suffering to happyness.
Looking bad to what i read in the novel, there have been alot of different points made by all the charectors introduced. Points about love, religion, and life. The other charectors always come back with counterpoints. However, usually some of the point/counterpoints used are the extremes, but thats what you can expect froma novel.