["First Papers"] is a long book in the midst of which the neurotic reviewer is apt to mutter, "Still so much to go?" But the reader who does not suffer from anxiety, and can afford to relax, will find that Alexandra Ivarin's reflections as she gazes at her husband are true of "First Papers" as a whole. Full of life and change, chaotic, undisciplined, this book throbs with genial emotions that give it an appeal rather like that of "One Man's Family."…

Stefan Ivarin is the center of this novel, but Mrs. Hobson changes her focus often. Writing from within first one of her characters and then another, she presents so many and such varied incidents that it is hard to see the trees for the forest. The impression one gets is that no single action, or set of actions, is as important as the life process itself. As in "One Man's Family," life goes on.

There is tragedy in Stefan Ivarin's life—but in these many pages what is tragic becomes sentimental, or at most, quixotic. It is as if God himself were not a capitalist—but a purblind doomster, made in the image of Thomas Hardy.