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Reviewed by Rob Woodgate An Intimate History of Humanity sees Zeldin describing his long conversations with people (almost entirely French women) in an attempt to find the ties that bind, and the bindings that have become untied. The conversations as described take the form of stories about his conversers’ lives, interspersed with essays about the connections between people, and between the lives they lead, but this is no leaden academic tome on social exclusion. Instead, Zeldin has written a profound and moving book about people who have shared their unvoiced reflections on their lives (and sometimes loves) with this most Francophile of Englishmen, and his greatest talent is to give voice to these surprisingly, and sometimes disturbingly, honest portrayals without making you feel as if you are intruding.
He uses a poignant, lyrical phrasing to describe nuanced and sometimes haunting situations, but he never tries to extract pity from the reader. Indeed, you feel that most of his subjects would be offended by such feelings, and that Zeldin would be embarrassed for these people if you were to feel that way. Instead of pity, you feel a two-fold compassion for them, both from yourself and as a vicarious emotion through Zeldin’s obviously sympathetic but never unrealistic eyes. His work is a counterpoint to the trite shallowness of so much modern social commentary that purports to provide a complete explanation of the difficulties that people can face; unlike these, Zeldin accepts as a first principle that he does not, indeed there may not be, solutions or final answers to the ways his subjects’ lives have turned out. He does draw out thoughts to ponder on, and his knowledge and understanding of French culture is used to provide backdrops and context, but he doesn’t attempt to lead us to a definite end point. What becomes apparent is that hoary old platitude about the similarities between peoples and cultures being more profound than the differences, but for once this feels like a revealed truth, not a forced politically correct sentiment, and this is perhaps Zeldin’s greatest achievement in this wonderful collection of writings. The upshot of this approach is a deeply satisfying journey through a book that for once lives up to the exhortations to read it from the critics on the back cover, and to those exhortations you can add mine, for this is a book that will leave you feeling glad that you woke up this morning as a member of the human race.
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