Unlike many, I'm neither thrilled nor devastated by the book. Disappointed, though. It's perhaps unfair to expect all an author's books to hit the same high level as an early breakout work, but it's hard not to, and Beatrice & Virgil is no [b:Life of Pi|4214|Life of Pi|Yann Martel|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266448756s/4214.jpg|1392700]. As has been pointed out, the book reads as an apology for the gap between Yann's novels, rather than as a complete work of its own. Worse, gone is the beautifully quirky prose of LoP, replaced with rather pedestrian descriptions of Henry's activities. The book actually descends into the level of "boring" in a few places - a crime for something that weighs in at under 200 pages.
The only time the book is special at all is during the play snippets, and those peak early (with the pear scene - brilliant, and probably earned the book 2.5 of its three stars above). By the end, rather than eagerly anticipating more play scenes, we're made uncomfortable by them and want to avoid them.