Many novelists of the latter part of the twentieth century tend to write what has been termed the "abstract" novel. As Robbe-Grillet explains, there is no omniscient narrator, such as that used by Balzac in the nineteenth-century, who like a god controls his characters and the events that happen to them. Instead, the characters are free to create their own existence, and a certain distance is established between the author and the reader. This enables the reader, in collaboration with the author, to create the story. It also creates a distance between the reader and the characters, thus appealing to the reader's intellect rather than emotions. The absence of place and personal names, of concrete descriptions, and of roots in the past characterize this abstract novel.

In The Square, Duras relies almost exclusively on relatively simple dialogue with no profound thoughts, no great discoveries...