This book was a gift from my mom, which she gave me before she had even finished reading it. As with her last gifted book to me (Black Leopard Red Wolf), this book is fantastic. Russian literature is always full of complicated and confusing emotions, and The Master & Margarita is no different, but I found this book more approachable than everything else Russian that I’ve read. The silliness of the devil’s retinue helps to cleanse the palate throughout the work, which gives you space to sit with the more difficult issue of what to make of Pontius Pilate, love, and redemption. I think I will be sorting through the book’s impact on me for a long while. What I need not sort through is the imagery: Bulgarov paints his lightning-sharp world with a precision and ease that lets you whip through Moscow and Satan’s ballroom as if you’ve always lived there. It is incredibly easy to see why this book has captivated readers for so long.
One thing that irks me though, and keeps my review from being without critique, is the deep maleness of the novel. The master is a pitiful creature, gifted with an incredibly competent lover in Margarita who adores him for a reason that stumps even our narrator. Virtually all other female characters (with the exception of Margarita’s maid, who seems to truly desire and achieve freedom) are wives or secretaries noted primarily for beauty or ugliness or shrillness or weepiness. In a book that seems capable of describing the whole world, I felt like we did not meet a fully ensouled woman.