A 970-page victory lap ... Details may be familiar to fans, but for the most part they ring out more resoundingly in Streisand’s chatty, ellipses-strewn telling. She may possess megawatt fame ...but between these covers she’s just Bubbe Barbra at a kitchen table ... Future editions, then, might excise some of the long block quotes of praise from her peers ... There’s something exuberant and glorious, though, about Streisand’s photo dump of self-portraits and party pics. Indeed about this whole dragged-out banquet of a book. You might not have the appetite to linger for the whole thing, but you’ll find something worth a nosh.
Streisand will have not only the last word; she will have the most words, and also the most true ones ... Streisand’s chatty, discursive presence hums on every page. She’s especially fond of ellipses and parentheticals, which give her the freedom to plow ahead with abandon and the permission to scoop up stray details as she remembers them ... Streisand often seems just about to swerve into nonsense, then steers herself back to the point ... Something incredibly rare. Call it the diva’s memoir, an act of bravura entertainment and impossible stamina. The diva’s memoir is, by definition, a somewhat delusional form, in that its author lives in a very different world from the rest of us, and has a different sense of scale. Streisand is not here to apologize or to excavate her pain ... Would we want anything less? Streisand has never thought it necessary to contain herself, and there’s no reason to start now.
1,000 pages of...gumption, her rhythmic Brooklyn cadence communicated via countless ellipses and more than a few pleasant divergences on her favorite kind of egg roll or a particularly good antique shopping trip ... It's a distinct pleasure to look back with My Name Is Barbra and marvel at how the real she came to be.
