Books like Sleepwalk and Other Stories

I closed Adrian Tomine's Sleepwalk and Other Stories feeling depressed, something in Tomine's negativity, his view of the disconnect inherent in the relationships between his characters and contemporary life filled me with a (temporary, I hope) despair. These short graphic stories are deeply unsettling, there is no hope, no grand resolutions. Sleepwalk doesn't wallow in the angst of the various situations presented, but is resigned to an elementary bleakness. Sleepwalk again proves that Tomine's style is better suited to the short story form. We are only briefly exposed to these drifting, disaffected lives, but that glimpse is enough to identify the hopelessness, the isolation, and the misunderstandings within. A minor issue is Tomine's overreliance on slabs of text, as if he is using a voice-over for his characters instead of relying on dialogue and image to show their stories. "Supermarket", the story of the girl in the grocery store and the blind man, completely devastated me, just ... painful in the obvious and honest depiction of enforced interactions.Sleepwalk is a difficult book to recommend, but undoubtedly provides some basic understanding and insight into the emotional landscape of the alienated and the outcast.