I read it over 50 years ago. I remember it being engaging enough but confusing — and not only because the author was being artsy, but because he was writing subversive literature in Stalinist Russia, and he probably didn’t want a bullet in the back of his head. Everything is highly metaphorical and allegorical and draped in mystery and inference. The Minitrue commissars hated it but at least they didn’t shoot him. It was more decoding than I was interested in (or up to) at that point. I might reread it just to see if it all makes sense now given over 50 years practice, which it might.
I’d like to think that in some small part Bulgakov wrote M&M as a means of crucifying the Chekists responsible for censoring it. Imagine their pleasure explaining the book to Comrade Stalin.