The first of the nearly thousand pages of My Name is Barbra opens disarmingly, heading off accusations of narcissism at the pass. “Am I a Babylonian queen or a basset hound?” Barbra Streisand muses about the contradictory descriptions she’s earned over the years, before deciding she’s “probably both (depending on the angle).” But not before recalling some of her unflattering descriptions, such as being described as “an amiable anteater,” “a seasick ferret,” and “a furious hamster.”

So, Barbra Streisand is many things to many people. And her life story has been told before — unauthorized biographies bearing titles such as Barbra Streisand: Redefining Beauty, Femininity and Power or The Importance of Being Barbra: The Brilliant, Tumultuous Career of Barbra Streisand have emphasized the prurience and the gossip, the rumors of diva behavior, and the famous boyfriends — but it has never been told by her. Streisand’s prose is folksy and accessible, liberally sprinkling touches of Yiddish and self-deprecation into the mix as she tells the story of her ascent from an early life in Brooklyn stymied by her unsupportive mother to Oscar-winning stardom in 1968 with her signature role as the Broadway star Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, followed by a series of records that sold near-unimaginable quantities. Guilty, Streisand’s 1980 collaboration with the “very sweet” Barry Gibb, sold 15 million copies worldwide.

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Now 81, Streisand has ignored changing fashions in music. Not for her a stripped-back collaboration with a hip producer like Rick Rubin or duets with younger artists like Taylor Swift or Ariana Grande. Her last studio album, 2018’s Walls, alternated between syrupy covers of "Imagine" and "What the World Needs Now" and, as befits a good Democrat, the Donald Trump-bashing lead single "Don’t Lie To Me." She has not directed a film since 1996’s profoundly mediocre The Mirror Has Two Faces, and her recent acting appearances have mainly been as Roz Focker in dismal Meet the Parents sequels.

Who, then, is this weighty tome for? And who indeed is Streisand for? To have appreciated Streisand in her A Star is Born or The Way We Were heyday the first time around, you would now have to be in your 60s. Nonetheless, this book will sell in large quantities to her eternally committed fan base of gay men, Jews, and those who yearn for a world of strong women who drop memoirs with the same dramatic certainty with which they belt out Broadway showstoppers in concert.

Incidentally, there have been more Streisand concerts in the past couple of decades than there were earlier in her career, the “tour de force,” perhaps now “forced to tour.” Streisand's rumored $400 million net worth may cushion any minor indignities that she has faced on the road. Besides, as she once told Life, “When I am not performing … I don’t think I have that definite a personality.”

This autobiography has to be seen as its own act of performance. It is a mammoth endeavor. Forty years in the asking, ten in the writing, the time has now come for this secular Torah to be offered to the faithful fan base. Streisand writes in the introduction, “I’m going to tell the truth, and nobody is going to believe it,” before confessing, “I get really bored with myself.” “Frankly,” she writes, “I think I’m rather ordinary.” You can almost hear the cries of editors, publicists, and sycophants at this point, shouting in unison, “No, Barbra! You could never be boring or ordinary!” Those who are not fully indoctrinated into the cult of Streisand might note that the act of publishing a memoir of this size belies modesty.

Still, even for the uninitiated, this thorough book offers jaw-dropping, eyepopping gossip, accumulated over decades of stardom. Name virtually any significant male actor of the '60s and '70s and you will discover some surprising detail. Marlon Brando drove her on day trips to the desert. After his offer to have sex with her, while his wife was in the room next door, was rebuffed, he offered to take her to a museum instead. Streisand writes that one of her great regrets was not making a film of Antony and Cleopatra with Brando late in life. It would undoubtedly have been a unique picture. It’s a bit of a pattern. The then-29, and married, Mandy Patinkin burst into tears, on the set of the Streisand-directed Yentl, when he was informed that they were not going to have a “personal relationship,” or an affair, as nonactors might put it. Omar Sharif was smitten, but it remained unrequited. (“Who knows what would have happened if I had joined him in Paris?”)

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And Streisand doesn’t stop at mere Hollywood royalty, either. She writes that she and the “utterly charming” King Charles III share an “extraordinary friendship” of half a century’s standing, although she also shares her onstage quip that “Who knows? If I had been nicer to him, I could have been the first real Jewish princess!”

My Name is Barbra will delight the faithful millions who have thrilled to Barbra’s every appearance and vocal crescendo. For the rest, this captivating, if admittedly way overlong, canter through a life onstage and on the screen does a decent job of justifying the ways of Streisand to man. And the amiable ferret (or is it a basset Babylonian?) pulls it off in a much more likable fashion than might have been anticipated.

Alexander Larman is the author of, most recently, The Windsors at War and an editor at the Spectator World.