Need time to think? Try 20 hours adrift in the Gulf of Mexico

Here’s what happens in Man Overboard!: a man falls (or jumps) over the side of a cruise ship; he treads water for 20 hours; while treading water he thinks about his life. That’s it. If you think that sounds like a pointless and stupid premise for a novel, you’d be spectacularly wrong, but also probably not the reader this novel deserves. If you want to see how a writer could pull off this premise without it being pointless and stupid, you should read the book.

Patrick ‘Kick’ Kilpatrick is 33...