Huma Abedin has long been an object of media fascination. There are several reasons: her close professional and personal relationship to Hillary Clinton, her unlucky marriage to disgraced former New York congressman Anthony Weiner, and her origins (Abedin is an American citizen of Indian and Pakistani descent who grew up mostly in Saudi Arabia). Her quiet dignity in the face of public humiliation and racist right-wing persecution, along with her beauty and fashion sense, has added to her mystique. As well, Weiner and Clinton are outsize public figures from whom the world has heard too much. With her recent memoir, Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds — a doorstop of a book, at 544 pages — we finally get to hear Abedin’s side of things.

Well, some things.

Abedin renders many of her experiences vividly, including her family’s history (her mother, a Fulbright scholar, comes from a line of Pakistani women who took extraordinary measures to secure education for themselves and their daughters); her happy childhood, much of it in Saudi Arabia; her relationship with Weiner; and the devastation of election night in 2016.