Unique collaboration between a writer and artist

If you like your fiction cut--and-dried with all its meaning up front and neatly packaged, then this astonishing collaborative novella by Tim Lebbon and artist Daniele Serra isn't for you.

If, on the other hand, you like a story you can dwell over afterwards then come on in ...

"Without Walls" is just the right side of ambiguous: there is no wrong way to interpret its meaning. At whichever point in life you are when you read a story influences what you get out of it. In ten years time l will, no doubt, have a completely different take on what l think this story 'means'.

For now here's what l think at this moment in time (SPOILER: skip the next paragraph if you think I'm going to reveal too much. But, again, this is just one take on what happened.)

This is a story of a lonely house which creates a boy called Henry, but kills him with kindness. The house tries again, bringing into being not one but two girls. Every parent has to let go and the girls do not escape but are allowed to leave.

Or not. Because the joy of Lebbon's words and Serra's exquisite line drawings is that this is what was gifted to me on this particular reading at this particular moment in my life.

I love the combination of art and text, and for those of you who checked out Serra's remarkable colour collaboration with Alison Littlewood, "Five Feathered Tales", a few years back will delight in the subtle flowing lines of his black and white art this time around.

Like all great stories it lingers and keeps on giving long after you have turned the last page.