Medium Rare by A. Natasha Joukovsky: An Icarus retelling weighed down by its own ambition

In Medium Rare by A. Natasha Joukovsky, the author of The Portrait of a Mirror returns with what’s billed as a modern tragicomedy reimagining the myth of Icarus through bureaucracy, B-list fame, and college basketball. It’s a high-concept premise: a middling Washington lobbyist goes viral-adjacent after predicting a near-perfect NCAA March Madness bracket, while a woman named Cassandra—yes, that Cassandra—watches it unfold with prophetic detachment and literary ambition. The execution, however, is far less aerodynamic.

Phil is the novel’s Icarus stand-in: an ordinary, faintly dissatisfied man who stumbles into the possibility of a billion-dollar perfect bracket during the 2019 tournament. As his predictions hold, attention snowballs. The media circles. The money looms. The ego inflates. You don’t have to be an oracle to see where this is headed. Phil will fly too high. He will burn. The arc is obvious from the start, which might have worked if the journey there had felt sharp or surprising.

Instead, this is one of those “literary” novels that seems perpetually aware of itself. The prose is dense and often overwrought, with long, winding sentences that draw attention to their own cleverness without necessarily delivering clarity. There are occasional glints of insight, but they’re frequently buried beneath excessive exposition. At times, it feels as though the novel is less interested in telling a story than in reminding you that it is telling one.

Cassandra serves as both character and meta-narrator, framing events as material for the novel she plans to write once Phil’s ascent and collapse have run their course. There are parallels to the Cassandra of myth—foreknowledge, frustration, the sense of not being heard—but they never feel fully realized. I kept waiting for the mythological layer to deepen or complicate the narrative in a meaningful way. Beyond the shared name and thematic gestures toward prophecy and disbelief, the connection remains surprisingly thin. As an Icarus retelling, it gestures toward grandeur without fully committing to it.

And then there’s the basketball.

I expected some basketball in a March Madness–centered novel. I did not expect extended play-by-plays of game after game, often rendered in meticulous detail. For readers who love bracketology and the rhythm of college hoops, this may be a feature rather than a flaw. For me, it bogged the story down. Ironically, the book becomes more readable once the championship ends and the focus shifts from the court to the emotional fallout.

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The most compelling thread isn’t Phil’s rise and fall but Cassandra’s evolving relationship with Phil’s wife, Raleigh. Cassandra, a self-described pragmatist who carefully selected her own husband as part of a well-designed life plan, finds herself unexpectedly moved by Raleigh. What grows between them isn’t romantic but intimate in a way that feels more honest than anything in the marriages depicted here. The novel hints at an idea many women will recognize: that the most sustaining love in one’s life may come not from chasing a man but from the friendships built with other women.

Unfortunately, I never felt fully invested in any of the characters. I don’t need protagonists to be likable, but I do need them to be engaging. Cassandra and her circle often come across as convinced of their own superiority, and the tone of the novel mirrors that self-satisfaction. Rather than biting satire, it reads as wearying smugness. I found myself admiring the ambition more than enjoying the experience.

If you’re drawn to basketball-heavy narratives and luxuriant, self-conscious prose, Medium Rare may well hit the sweet spot. For readers hoping for a sharper mythological retelling or characters who command emotional investment, this one may feel like a high-flyer that never quite sticks the landing.

Are you planning to pick up Medium Rare, which just released yesterday? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments—especially if you’re a college basketball fan curious about how this one handles the madness.

An advance reader copy of this book (ARC) was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Related Content

• Books that matter: A. Natasha Joukovsky on Evelina by Frances Burney (Fiction Matters)
• The publishing industry is capricious… Gamble on yourself (Literary Hub)
• If you’re looking for unlikeable characters who are also entertaining, check out my reviews of A Good Person and Best Offer Wins!

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