While other tales by Munro in Open Secrets (1994) and her earlier works are distinguished by their subtle, almost seamless transitions in narrative time and perspective, "The Albanian Virgin" is characterized by sudden shifts in viewpoint and time. These abrupt changes create significant gaps on the page that require the reader's attention to notice the transitions. This narrative structure highlights the cultural, historical, and geographical distances that separate the contrasting worlds explored within the story.

Despite the apparent abruptness of these shifts in perspective and time, Munro crafts a nuanced narrative where the two worlds and stories become intertwined. Instead of emphasizing dissimilarity and separation, the structure of the story underscores the interconnectedness of these two worlds. Both realms appear fragmented, divided by numerous, often interrelated, and inevitably destructive binaries: male-female, knowable-mysterious, ordinary-fantastic, rational-intuitive. Adding complexity to these dynamics is a seemingly transhistorical and transcultural sexual politics that influences all cultural interactions with an imbalance of power and the potential for conflict. Furthermore, the story culminates in a moment of synthesis, where time and space converge with an almost magical effect. This subtle interconnection is most clearly embodied in the character of Charlotte, whose story may or may not be true, and whose presence and sudden disappearance from Claire's life highlight the unpredictable blend of the mundane and the magical. As Munro herself noted, "The Albanian Virgin" moves toward a sense of possibility rather than a narrow focus on the probable.

Without appearing contrived or weakened by a quasi-Victorian reliance on coincidence, the formal structure of "The Albanian Virgin" also thematically aligns with Claire's reluctance to acknowledge the magical aspects of her life. Just as the essence of her experiences in Victoria defies being neatly categorized within any illusion of stability and completeness, the story's overall structure resists the reader's urge to impose clarity and order. This resistance prevents the reader from gaining control or mastery over the narratives within the story through a sense of purposefulness and closure. Like Claire, the reader is left uncertain about how the tales of Charlotte and Lottar connect or where the story of Lottar concludes and Charlotte's begins.

"The Albanian Virgin" is a complex tale that weaves a story within a story, exploring romance in its broadest definition—encompassing events and experiences primarily defined by emotions and imagination. This serves as a counterbalance to the division and inflexibility defining the two central worlds of the narrative. One world belongs to Claire, a woman who leaves her husband and lover in central Canada to relocate to Victoria, British Columbia, in 1964. The other is the realm of Lottar, a young Canadian woman traveling alone through Europe during the 1920s, who finds herself ensnared in an intergenerational blood feud in the mountains of northern Albania.

Claire inhabits a world where passion and a sense of life's extraordinariness have nearly vanished, from the enchanting experience of reading poetry to the sensuality of love. While working on a dissertation about Mary Shelley's later novels, Claire is drawn to the liberating spirit that once energized Mary before she learned life's harsh lessons and committed to raising her son to become a baronet. Claire perceives her life in London, Ontario, gradually descending into monotony and routine. This world has replaced the intense ideological and personal connections that fueled the passions of Romantics like Byron and the Shelleys—what Claire describes as a "mishmash of love and despair and treachery and self-dramatizing"—with a cultural narrative that prioritizes caution and "control." Through her relocation and growing friendship with a peculiar, gypsy-like couple, Charlotte and Gjurdhi, Claire discovers that mystery can indeed persist amidst the...