The Master and Margarita review

I was told that all good stories start off with a glass (or a bottle) of alcohol. Surprise, surprise, this is one of the best books I’ve ever read and it starts with apricot juice!

To start off, this is not my first Bulgakov book. When I first started college and joined the local library, I picked up Heart of a Dog and it terrified me to the core. Yes, it was brilliant story, but it was so unsettling that, I don’t know, it kind of scared me off of the other Bulgakov books? And I had Master and Margarita ever since I was 17. I originally picked it up because there was a cafe in my hometown that was called Master and Margarita, so it kind of, I guess inspired me, irrelevant, onto the review.

  <– My copy

Okay, so I LOVED Bezdomny. He just entered my inner circle of my all time favourite characters and I have sworn that if anything horrible happened to him, that I would dig up Bulgakov myself and kill him all over again. Extreme? Maybe, judge me.

Woland is the tipycal devilish type. All charm and black magic, nodding and stroking his chin as he procclaims ‘interesting’ over and over again, unless you say that you don’t believe in devil, then the heads start to roll. Koroviev and Behemoth were a power couple whom I absolutely loved (let’s be real, I loved everything about this book, but okay) and were amazing sidekicks to Mr. Devil.

I can just imagine Woland as he finished up his meal with Kant thining about going to Moscow and being like ‘alright, let’s go there and destroy the place’, so full on John Mulaney, except he sent everyone to the asylum or simply sent them out walking pennyless and naked. If Master and Margarita were to be titled something else, it would probably be ‘The Devil in the Red City’, just a thought.

Master is amazing, he’s probably the character to whom I related the most. A master of writing but rejected by everyone and pretty much misunderstood by everyone (except for Margarita), ends up destroying his own work? Brings back memories of deleting all the drafts I created for my possible books.

Margarita is lovely and amazing, I absolutely loved her love and devotion to master, despite not knowing whether he is dead or alive, she kept on living and hoping, willing to sell her soul to the devil in order to hear a word of him. And I must say, I absolutely loved Bulgakov breaking the fourth wall with ‘Follow me, reader’ and then talking about love so true and so pure, of course, the love of master and Margarita.

The only parts that I struggled with are those parts that are essential to the book, Pontius Pilate parts. But again, I kind of expected to struggle with it. Still pushed through it and loved the book in total.

Oh look, perhaps the first post where I did not talk about music (it was all radio music, so I don’t even remember, I was too occupied with book to concentrate on music).

Rating: 10/5