The weight of the sun - Andrew Humphreys

James Bloomington is prone to nose bleeds, sweating fits and excessive formality. Very few people find this in any way endearing. His father having disappeared, quite literally, before his second birthday, James has been raised by his mother, Veronica, a woman known and feared for her beauty and her fondness for the STSC-720 N95 line of disposable particulate respirators. Working as a junior editor for legal publishers Sandler and Harris, James has arranged his solitary life according to his own peculiar standards of conduct and, more importantly, order. But when Veronica discovers an apparently homeless man sitting in a city lane who may or may not look like her son in 10 years time, James Bloomington's sense of his own identity is called into question and his life begins to unravel around him. As the relentless summer sun bears down, James is forced to deal with the man in the lane, his hyperactive boss's infatuation for his mother, his own infatuation for his boss's daughter, an amorous, possibly Italian landlady, an aggressive leprechaun, public masturbators, self-improving Nazis, a well-kept hedge, and a mysterious telephone booth that seems to know his every hidden desire.;Set in Sydney, The Weight of the Sun is a black comic novel about a boy and his mother, love and detachment, loneliness and hope. It also features one particularly good joke about a German shepherd.