In my opinion, the most important thing about a book about a pictorial artist is (usually) the actual pictures shown(including the quality of the reproductions), and I feel in this respect this book falls rather flat. Not only are there not enough large (full or half page) pictures for a book of this size (216 pages) - some of them are poor quality reproductions (a painfully common feature of art books) - why do paintings vary so much between different reproductions?
Instead the book is mainly concerned with excessively wordy discourses on Magritte and his work. I'm not saying I didn't find any of it interesting, but the information and insight I gleaned after 8 hours of reading could have been put over with half as much text. I don't have a problem with writers indulging in intellectual analysis, so long as it is concise and well written, and this wasn't always the case.
Incidentally, Magritte by Richard Calvocoressi (Phaidon - April 1993) is much shorter but has much better pictures in it.
(review altered 27 May 2005, partly to remove British slang words that may have caused confusion)