Book Review: Winging It by Lia Russ

Reviewed by Melissa Suggitt

With a backpack, a stubborn spirit, and an unlikely companion, Lia Russ learns that every foreign street corner holds a piece of who she’s meant to be.

Some memoirs feel less like reading someone’s story as an outsider and more like you’re standing beside them, tasting the air, watching the light shift across a street, sensing the tension between where they’ve come from and where they’re going. Lia Russ’s Winging It is exactly that kind of book. It’s a deeply sensory account of one woman’s journey across East Asia in the mid-1980s, written with a keen eye for the poetic details most travelers would miss.

But this isn’t just a chronicle of border crossings and train tickets. It’s a story about what happens when the ground beneath you shifts, when you trade the familiar for the uncertain, the expected, the unknown.

At nineteen, Russ is dyslexic, misunderstood, and feeling like she’s failed to find her place in the world. So she does something radical: she leaves. “Once free of the restraints of my culture,” she writes, “I began to explore life on my own terms.” That act of stepping away becomes the catalyst for transformation, leading her from the chaotic heat of Calcutta’s markets to the hushed serenity of Japanese temples, from Bangkok’s labyrinthine backstreets to the thin air of Himalayan trails.

Russ’s gift is her descriptive precision. She doesn’t simply tell us what she saw—she pulls us into the scene. We smell the “foreignness” of the air, feel the jostle of crowded buses, hear the rumble of third-class train cars rattling through the night. When a beetle lands unexpectedly on her hand, its “wet, chitinous legs” become a metaphor for the uncomfortable, necessary contact with a wider world. And in moments of stillness, she offers reflections that feel both intimate and universal: “I felt small and inconsequential,” she admits, “yet more alive than I ever had before.”

Central to this journey is Eric, her travel companion and partner, whose steady presence becomes a crucial thread throughout the narrative. He’s not a mere side character but a catalyst. His experience, confidence, and occasional stubbornness shape the direction of their travels, influencing how they pack, how they move, and how they adapt to life far from home. Together, their partnership reflects the push-and-pull of two people navigating unfamiliar terrain, each experience deepening their bond and forcing them to confront their own limitations and assumptions.

What makes Winging It so compelling is its refusal to rush. This is not a story that races forward on adrenaline or dramatic twists. Instead, it invites you to linger, to slow down, breathe in the moment, and consider what each encounter reveals about culture, identity, and the messy process of becoming. That meditative pacing may mean the book intrigues more than it grips, but it’s also what gives the memoir its depth and resonance.

This isn’t just a travelogue; it’s a portrait of resilience, curiosity, and the courage it takes to step beyond what’s safe and familiar. Winging It is a love letter to the transformative power of travel and a testament to how, in discovering the world, we often discover ourselves.

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