Q&A with Christina Kovac

 

 

 

Christina Kovac is the author of the new novel Watch Us Fall. She also has written the novel The Cutaway. A former television journalist, she lives in the Washington, D.C., area. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Watch Us Fall, and how did you create your characters Lucy, Addie, and Josh?

 

A: The idea for the four roommates in Watch Us Fall first struck years ago, while I was hiking three hours from the city on Assateague Island on the Maryland coast.

 

Along a back bay trail, I stumbled on a tall tree with four girls on its limbs, legs tangled, laughing and bumping shoulders. They were joyful. Their holds were precarious. I was so scared they’d fall, I couldn’t watch. I hiked on. 

 

But I kept thinking of them. What if, in a novel, those girls were older, post-grads? Maybe they lived on my favorite cobblestone street in one of the Georgetown rowhouses I’ve peeked inside. Could one character have a secret too heartbreaking to face? Another that refuses to tolerate a lie? They became Addie, Lucy, Penelope, and Estella. 

 

Josh is a composite creature from the many TV reporters I’ve worked with in my journalism days, the good ones who still did the news the right way.

 

He’s also a bit of a fantasy: I gave him good looks, a JFK Jr. mystique, Ronan Farrow’s relentless brilliance, and voila, Josh Egan, son of former presidential candidate, now 31-year-old TV reporter madly in love with Addie. 

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: I started working on, and thinking about, Watch Us Fall during the height of the pandemic, a time of terrifying disinformation and relentless attacks on science and facts and books—attacks that unfortunately have only increased with speed and vitriol. 

 

As I was writing the novel, I kept wondering about the personal costs of lies. If we turn away from truth, what would this mean for our closest, most cherished relationships? How would we love? What are we left with if we chose lies over truth? When does holding onto a lie turn into delusion?

 

The title came out of those questions. It feels like a falling action—doesn’t it? If we can’t face the truth, how do we not fall apart? 

 

Q: The writer Angie Kim said of the book, “Christina Kovac masterfully combines a twisty missing person mystery, a heartbreaking love story, and an insightful exploration of the nature of obsession and trauma.” What do you think of that description, and how did you blend the various aspects of the novel as you wrote it?

 

A: It was really kind of her to say. She’s my favorite writer, and I admire her so much. 

 

Missing people, love, obsession, trauma, feel to me perfect themes for a psychological suspense thriller, which Watch Us Fall is. Josh goes missing, that’s the basic plot, and the four friends do try to find him.

 

But it’s very much a love story: Addie and Josh are wildly in love, even as their relationship falls apart. The four best friends—Addie and Lucy, but also Penelope and Estella—love each other like family, some more obsessively.

 

There’s a bit of a love triangle going on: the love between your friends in conflict with the love with your sexual partner, a common conflict for young women in their mid-20s. How obsessively the characters navigate those feelings—the interpersonal stakes—raises the novel to psychological suspense level. 

 

What I really like about these characters is the lengths they will go to for each other. They will do anything for each other, which is also what’s scariest about them.

 

Much of their over-the-top response has to do with their own past traumas seething and wriggling in the deep underground of the story. Subconsciously, I think, they’re trying to heal themselves through love for each other; to redeem themselves and get do-overs for past mistakes made, which unfortunately causes lots of tragic current mistakes.  

 

Q: Did you need to do any research to write the book, and if so, did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: I read a lot of psychological articles in medical journals about re-enactments—which is the psychological need some people feel to throw themselves into situations similar to their past traumas to finally get a sense of redemption, or to gain control of feelings of powerlessness.

 

I found these psychological theories surprising (and scary) and fascinating. The research made me reconsider how much people look at present-day events through a lens of past experience. Maybe we all struggle with our own pasts we can’t shuck. Maybe we ought to be a little less judgmental and a lot more curious about other people’s hurts, was my thinking. I hope I’m more thoughtful. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: My third novel! I’m so happy and excited. It’s another D.C.-based crime thriller with psychological elements. This one is set in the largest neighborhood in the city, Capitol Hill—which is so vibrant and diverse, economically, racially, socially, the whole gamut.

 

It’s family versus family, which is really fun. The question for this next novel is: what wouldn’t you do to keep your child safe? 

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: If you’re in D.C. on December 2, come see me at Politics and Prose! I’ll be in conversation with Angie Kim, best-selling author of Happiness Falls. My full schedule of events will be posted soon to my website and announced in my newsletter shortly. Click if you want to sign up! 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Christina Kovac.