Taking its leave from scholarship on the porous nature of the convent enclosure and Helen Hills's exploration of convent architecture, Woshinsky's book focuses on several texts either about convents or coming from within convents to gain an insight into how the ‘space’ of the cloister was represented and thought of in France. The focus reaches from the imposition of strict enclosure by the Council of Trent until the closure of monasteries by the French Revolutionary regime, and beyond. By drawing out the metaphorical significance of the language used, the author's analysis of texts is extended out to buildings and physical bodies. Deploying architecture as an overall framework for how nuns' convents were conceived, Woshinsky explores literature for both secular and religious audiences within the categories of ‘thresholds’, ‘parlours’, ‘cells’ and ‘tombs’. The first encompasses mid-seventeenth century texts by three secular women, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, Margaret Cavendish and Madame La Fayette. Each presents different takes on the ‘threshold space’ with society that convents offered, in La Fayette's case portraying a heroine retreating to a religious space without taking vows. Convents offered unique opportunities to women, and were also spaces which replicated the social and power structures of society at large, in which convent communities themselves played a special part. Woshinsky therefore progresses to consider convents as part of a social network, touching both real life (the memoirs of Hortense and Maria Mancini) and novels (Villedieu's fictional memoirs). Moving to a discussion of convent cells, the author points to a literary shift at the end of the seventeenth century towards the erotic attraction of secret and forbidden women's spaces. The climax is a chapter on Diderot's La Religeuse (1760) and Les Lettres portugaises (1662) in which entry into the forbidden female space of the convent enclosure is taken to a new level of sexual obsession. The enclosure in Guilleragues's Lettres is a one-way threshold across which others can enter, but the nun cannot leave: the author takes on the female narrative and persona, can invade the feminine space. Woshinsky's expertise evidently lies within the field of French literature and this book would understandably benefit from greater reference to the fine scholarship on convent life and nuns' literary culture elsewhere in the early modern Catholic world. Placing these texts more firmly within this broad historical context would bolster the presentation of their wider meaning. Unfortunately, the inclusion of many of the printed images is sadly questionable given the poor quality of their reproduction, and on occasion the erratic layout of the text and citation of references obstructs the flow of reading. However, this monograph offers a useful and focused contribution to the identification of convent literary culture within French society and, in drawing together ideas of architectural space with literary works, supplements the scope of current research.