From "Ariadne"

If I were in the habit of worrying about genre and type (which, by the way, I am from the sheer mental game of it) I would be hard-pressed to place J. M. G. LeClézio.  Is it surrealism?  Is it hyperrealism?  Is it soaked in Hollywood melodrama?  I don't know.  But I do know that I like it.

from "Ariadne"
in The Round and Other Cold Hard Facts
J. M. G. LeClézio

Suddenly she's terror stricken. She doesn't really know what the fear is based on, but it's there inside of her, like a spasm, and it's also all around her -- in the silence of the wide, empty streets, the gigantic buildings with their hundreds, their thousands of windows, in the orangey light of the streetlamps, in the cold wind blowing up through the valley, carrying with it the acrid smell of fumes and the rumor of the freeway. It is a strange, vague sort of fear that tightens in Christine's throat, making her hands and back break out in sweat despite the cold.

She walks quickly now, trying not to think of anything Yet suddenly she remembers the piercing look of the Milk Bar owner, and her heart starts beating faster, as though she could still feel those eyes upon her, spying on ther from the shadows. Maybe he really is there. She recalls that he was going to close shop and that he watched her after she went out of the Milk Bar, when she was standing in the street.

There is a stranged and estranged beauty in the writing.  There is a bone-deep sense of alienation from the surroundings.  Is it really possible near a project to have completely empty streets?  Tomb-like buildings?  Or is this just the sense one derives from such an artificial setting?

Each story seems to represent a different form of alienation of complete divorce from the surrounding reality. And in that divorce a disconnect from what we see and an attachment to a fugue-like panic state--an entirely different realm of being perfectly captured.

Upon completing the story, it may be helpful to reflect on the fact that Ariadne is the one who helps Theseus escape from the labyrinth and eventually is spouse to Dionysius.  Also to reflect that Ariadnes is NOT the name of the heroine here.