Stolen Tongues

While Stolen Tongues is largely centered on a horror plot, it also features a romantic relationship at its emotional core. Felix and Faye first visit the cabin together shortly after they become engaged, with their experiences with the Imposter quickly putting their love and commitment to the test. Through their fraught dynamic, the novel explores the complications of love and intimacy.

Felix and Faye clearly love one another, but the novel suggests from early on that they are not always as close or as trusting of one another as they first seem. Felix tends to frame his relationship with Faye as one between a masculine protector and a feminine dependent, which both drives his emotional investment in trying to shield her from the Imposter and threatens to undermine their true emotional intimacy. Felix behaves toward Faye in a way that sometimes becomes paternalistic and possessive, with Felix even resenting the fact that Faye’s “nature was to be very protective of her inner thoughts and feelings” (101), as he feels Faye having her own private inner life thwarts his efforts to know—and direct—what is going on with the Imposter. More problematically, he is quick to suspect Faye of dishonesty, such as when he complains, “I couldn’t tell which of them [Lynn or Faye] was the liar.