Through the book's central character, Old Alex (a retired journalist, coincidentally just like the author), wave after wave of recognition and acknowledgement of pain and anguish and confusion and foreboding wash over the reader, like a soothing balm for the still raw wounds inflicted by our political leaders. It's just as well – in between the passages where we crawl inside Old Alex's head, and hear and feel the visions and the dreams for a country so utterly changed, Stapleton catalogues in excruciating detail the things that were done to us.

It's confronting.

Some of the things I knew about, many others I didn't, thanks to the suffocating censorship of our complicit mainstream media. Still others I knew about, but had tried to forget.