Defined meteorologically, landfall refers to a storm which strikes land after forming over water. By another definition, it is the first sight of a traveller who, like the aforementioned storm, has spent too long at sea. Both are destination and terminus, so it is unsurprising that the writer who edited The Penguin Book of the Ocean (2010) would pen a novel obsessed with water, and with people crossing it, sheltering from it, or simply trying to stay afloat. The inhabitants of Landfall are already deluged, and another storm is on the way. Beginning on a Monday morning and with a tropical cyclone due by week’s end, time in the novel is running short from the very start.