2666 Spoilers

I'm having great difficulty getting interested in my latest book, 2666. It seems to be a South American author "style thing" because I've encountered it before, where the author writes extremely long run-on sentences. By the time I get to the end of the sentence five pages later, I've forgotten who started the thought, who else was present, what events were occurring, and any of the content of the sentence. From the tone and syntax of the dialogue, you would think the story was set decades ago, but it is around present day. Also, by page 100 of the 900 or so in the book, I still have no idea what the story is about. So far, it's about four academics and their very twisted romantic "relationship", yes singular, they all seem to be involved together. I think it is supposed to eventually be about a mass murder investigation but I'm getting thoroughly impatient waiting for something to happen.