Exaggeration is, sometimes, quite very effective. People like it, because it usually gives them something to laugh about, or to make them notice things that, in a more subtle setting, they would have failed to. Perhaps that's the reason people enjoy Meryl Streep's over the top acting, or Desperate Housewives' goofiness, or other soap operas. Nothing is wrong with that. 
 But it requires familiarity with a realistic theme to work. If you are not familiar with the real settings, the exaggerated setting is probably going to fail. Perhaps that's why "The Idiot" failed for me, or I failed at enjoying it. I was not familiar with the overly odd and alien setting of the Russian people that it tried to represent, and I could not enjoy and exaggerated version of it. 
 If I had to name this book, I wouldn't call it "The Idiot". For me, it was "The Idiots".