"Brothers Karamazov", sort of overrated?

I finished the first 3 parts of Brothers Karamazov (1880) by Dostoevsky, there's still part 4 to go which are roughly around 330 pages on the edition I'm reading (out of 1,000 ), so I decided to take a break for it before taking it back again (to read "The Luzhin Defense" by Vladimir Nabokov, a short novel just over 200 pages long but that's the subject of another discussion).

This is the second Dostoevsky book I've read, the first being "Crime & Punishment", but Brothers K is the one widely known as his magnus opus. Some Dostoevskyan themes are repeated like prostitutes seeking redemption and murderous buttholes with a supposed heart of gold. This is a 19th century novel so foids suddenly suffer from "hysteria attacks" which are dealt with as an actual pathology/disorder

The story centers around 3 brothers, the children of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov (a ghastly paternal figure with no redeeming qualities besides being occasionally funny). They are; Dimitri Fyodorovich (the eldest, an army officer, a libertine, and a drunk brute who can't form coherent sentences)

Ivan Fyodorovich (r/atheism of the 1870s personified)

Alexei Fyodorovich (known by his nickname Alyosha, a saint of pure heart who wanted to become a monk before his personal hero told him to leave the monastery and see the world).

There's also the servant known as "Smerdiakov", who's heavily implied to be Fyodor's bastard with the town simpleton. His late mother who died at childbirth was mentally disabled and pretty much everyone in town suspects Fyodor r*ped her.

Before reading it I was familiarized with the passage of "The Great Inquisitor", which is a made up poem summary made by the character Ivan and usually hyped up as this great philosophical moment. It was a 20 pages ramble on the existence of God (succeeding another 20 pages ramble Ivan was spouting before).

The plot of the novel is simple. Dimitri is supposed to marry a fine woman but instead squanders all his money and hers on booze and whores, he ends up falling in love with Grushenka, the town bike, but it turns out Dimitri's dad is her sugar daddy.

This is a 19th century mystery crime novel, so everybody keeps foreshadowing out lout and with no subtlety that Dimitri is going to kill his father (he even beats the crap out of him at some point). The day before the crime the servant Smerdiakov (totally not the real murderer) tells Ivan that Dimitri knows the secret knock to enter his father's house because he told him so (supposedly was coerced to do it) and that on that same night he would suffer from an epileptic attack and Dimitri would enter and kill his father.

Mitia shows up at night, leaves with some money and bloody, buys a bunch of booze and goes to meet Gruchenka who's with a bunch of poles partying on a nearby town. The police arrives a few hours later and is heavily implied on Mitia's analysis that Smerdiakov did it but he acts like an r-slur during his interrogation dooming himself.

There's a bunch of other side stories, some of them amusing, others are just filler, and other details about Dimitri's interrogation and the crime scene but I'm not going to write an entire book out of it lol. I was wondering if the translations helped this book to become famous. I'm reading the Portuguese translation by Paulo Bezerra made for "Editora 34", it's the newest translation available and supposedly quite faithful to the original. The dialogue comes off as clunky (especially Dimitri's) but that could be incidental by the author.

So you guys may ask, is this book good? Is it bad? Is it worth a shot?

If you're familiarized with Dostoevsky and enjoyed his works you'll love it, but I feel like at least a couple hundred of pages (or maybe more) could be trimmed without making much of a difference. Maybe I'm too much of a to get his philosophy on how Christian Orthodoxy is the best thing ever and how the Russian folk is so pure. I still have the last part to finish but it's obvious Smierdiakov did it so is not really a twist.

Also, I have to say that Grushenka is a much entertaining whore than the saintly Sonya from C&P. She's unapologetic and is quite funny when she tells Alyosha she's totally saved and will leave her old life behind after a 5 minute talk with him.

!bookworms