Barbra Streisand’s Memoir Made Me a Convert

Barbra Streisand is a woman who needs no introduction. Usually. As it happens, until this week, I knew almost nothing about Barbra Streisand. I guess it’s partly that she’s a little less famous where I’m from, the United Kingdom, and that I’m not much into musical theater. I knew she was in Meet the Fockers, and I had half a memory of something about her having a miniature mall underneath her house. In my head, her name sat alongside the words diva and demanding, although I couldn’t tell you why. And so, when I learned that she had a memoir out, the first she’s ever written, at 81, and saw that it was 1,000 pages long, I thought, Jesus Christ. A thousand pages? What has anybody got to say that would take a thousand pages? Who is this woman?