Artylo’s Reviews > The Master and Margarita > Status Update

Don't even get me started on the biblical interludes. I was just, finally, getting my spirits up as Margarita enters the scene, only to be forced to bite the curb with two back-to-back episodes of Judas and Matthew Levi's wild ride.
If you want to read theological fan-fiction with extra steps, there are many great ways to do so. Well, three... there's three - Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso.

I look to this book and naively expect it to do its sole advertised function - fend of boredom - and every time, without fail, I act surprised when it manages to only intensify it.
It is becoming more and more apparent that mischief is the driving force behind all these events and there is no motive - they happen for shits and giggles. It's like watching someone else have fun instead of having fun yourself.

I-is... is... is that a character?
Is there an actual fucking character in my book? With stuff to do?
Someone who isn't just there to be a vessel for bizarre freak-show incidents to happen to them?

Only in Russia can you justify writing a 400-page book making fun of the socialites and the intelligentsia - it's why you lovely people like blowing up churches on Christian holidays.

Margarita you beautiful bitch!

I've already suffered loss as a result of this book. I'm being evicted. My things are on the street. I've had a restraining order filed against me. She also beats me to within an inch of my life anytime she sees me.

Yet, I continue on reading - against my better judgement. Six more pages of lion-shaped epaulettes glinting in the sun. One more drop of poison for breakfast. Merry Christmas!

I am bouncing off of this book harder than the ball in an entire season of MBA Moscow Women's Basketball matches, so I have made the executive decision to change the language I'm reading it in, in the hope that it will stir something in me. It is incredibly annoying how it is only seldom funny.

I'm on Ch. 6 currently, and there's already a mild anxiety setting in as I get introduced to at least 10 new characters per page - given, middle and surname - and I don't remember a single one of them. I'm THE shy guy at parties, but this is worse. I would say I've never wanted a bomb to drop over Moscow, so that I don't have to worry about all these Russians any more, but that would be the third time this week.

Reading this as penance for making people read Roadside Picnic through sheer aura of fanaticism.
So far, in the first two chapters, I have read more paragraphs describing the colour of people's skin and/or the exact colour of their hair than whatever crypto-christian divine-comedy-esque self-flagellation is going on. Can't wait to see what the plaque under my cat's left tooth thinks about our lord Jesus Christ.