A review by bluejayreads
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

reflective slow-paced
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated

3.75

Ever since I read Vita Nostra I’ve been chasing that high, looking for another book that’s a similar combination of incomprehensible and enthralling – or even a book that’s equally enthralling as that masterpiece. I picked up this book because I hoped that maybe another Russian novel about Satan’s hijinks in Moscow would be what I’ve been searching for. 

It really wasn’t. It was well-written, to be sure, and interesting enough to finish, but it didn’t hold a candle to Vita Nostra. I’m not entirely sure anything will. 

There isn’t a main cast in this story, unless you count Woland (the alias Satan took for his time in Moscow) and his entourage. The story follows many different characters showing all the different ways Woland and company mess with the people Moscow – usually by getting them arrested or sent to an insane asylum. It’s not entirely clear to me if Woland has a reason for being there or if he’s just there to cause chaos. I did enjoy his companions, especially the cat. They were all unique, well-drawn, and entertaining personalities. 

This book wasn’t published in the author’s lifetime because the censors didn’t like its portrayal of life under the Stalinist regime. I don’t know enough about Russia, Russian culture and attitudes, and what Russia was like under Stalin to pick up on any of that. In fact, I felt like I didn’t really pick up on anything this book was trying to say. It’s one of those where I wish I had an English teacher telling me what I’m supposed to be seeing, like those magic eye pictures where it’s easier to find the hidden image if someone tells me what I’m looking for. 

The plot itself is fairly comprehensible on a surface level. (The hardest part was keeping track of the names, because many of the characters had nicknames that did not at all relate to their names. There were several times where I was confused at the introduction of a new character only to realize later that I’d already met him under a different name.) I understood the what, but not the why. I can tell that there’s some other layer of meaning behind Woland tormenting Moscow, the story of the Master and his lover Margarita, and whatever Pontius Pilate had to do with anything, but I couldn’t figure out what. It was a good story, but I finished it feeling like I’d figured out what it was about but was completely missed what it means. 

I enjoyed the story for itself. Once I figured out that the guy the story started with was not the actual protagonist, it was a lot of fun. But I wish I had read this in an English class or with a friend who was really into Russian literature or something, because there’s a lot more underneath the surface here that I just can’t grasp. 
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