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Title: Woefully narrow sense of the place.
Review: AMit Gilboa's OFF THE RAILS starts out giving a vivid sense of a fascinating city, but soon the pounding one note he strikes, the note of westerns as bottom feeders out for rotten good times, begins to weary. Any visitor in Phnom Penh meets and sees some of the people Gilboa knows--they are there and Gilboa provides something of a record of their existence. But Phnom Penh offers so much more than his talk of the depressing "Majestic" Hotel crowd. Yeah, in a one-line disclaimer in the preface he admits that such people aren't the whole picture, but good journalism must not ignore the greater context after a such a limp disclaimer. Sure, show us the Majestic crowd but at least show them rubbing shoulders with the other expats in the city who work in real education, in building commerce, in landmine operations, in goverment exchanges, in journalism, in physical therapy. Gilboa presents a sensationalist vison--no big problem about that; but it is incredibly narrow.
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