Bellefleur Update: Beauty in the Breakdown

Late last night I finished Joyce Carol Oates' Bellefleur. It was an unexpectedly arduous journey to say the least. And this is just FYEO (for your eyes only), but I may be checking into a "spa" to deal with the emotional exhaustion caused by caring too much, and then finally not enough, about the complicated cast of characters--literally hundreds of dead, alive, or nebulous beings--with their various romances, progeny, suicides, murders, visions, melancholy spells, name changes, and hauntings. Could someone please pass the smelling salts?