Monica Baldwin, in 1914, entered a contemplative religious order. She was 21. She lived in strict enclosure until 1942, when she was dispensed from her vows. Having missed the First World War, she was now plunged into the middle of the second. I Leap Over the Wall, first published in 1949 and now reissued, is a chronicle of those first baffling months.The shock of arriving into an environment brutally reshaped by mass death, political violence and economic upheaval is at once too big to grasp and too obvious to need much exposition. Baldwin tells her story succinctly and well, with a great deal of dry wit and a violet-scented snobbery that would do justice to a Mitford or Angela Thirkell. Her observations are not always appealing, but they are engaging. She has a fine sense not only for t