"Weird," was my reaction to much of the book. It's funny in an absurdist way that I'm not sure really translates in the moment, or perhaps in the translation. The image of the secret police shooting without success at Behemoth the cat is quietly hilarious.

I'm of two minds on my overall takeaway. I would have preferred more footnotes and annotations, since the few pages that my version offered didn't really give a great amount of insight into the people and places being satirized. I got the broad strokes: stalinism, gulags, etc., but the nuance I just assumed is there. So I would have liked to break that down more. Another example: an end note describes the repeated reference to a "Queen Margot", but doesn't give any further context. With no knowledge of the historical character, the allusion doesn't give me any better context for understanding Margarita in the novel.

That's one mind. The other says that a better accounting of allusions wouldn't necessarily be keeping with the spirit of the novel, and that maybe the best course of action is just to revisit it again at a later date. The characters, except the parade of useless writers, are memorable and worthy of revisit. The goal then would be not necessarily to decipher the book, but dwell on and draw out its absurdities.

Anyway, that is all to say, I liked it, and the book is Great (capital G).