The stock of 26 letters including a mere five vowels that we borrowed

The stock of 26 letters, including a mere five vowels, that we borrowed from ancient Semitic and Latin languages is nowhere near big enough to express every nuance of spoken English, so we’ve had to combine individual letters into digraphs and trigraphs. Early Christian lore had it that bees sprang from the wounds of Christ, while in ancient Egypt they were held to come from the tears of the god Re. To the ancients, then, bees were a divine enigma and their honey, therefore, the food of the gods. Indeed, our lexicon of love, as well as our palettes, would be impoverished without honey, that sweetest of naturally occurring substances and multipurpose metaphor, and Wilson argues that our infatuation with the honeybee says much about us.The mystery of how bees reproduce wasn’t solved until the mid-19th century. Or perhaps there’s both – Hannah rather loses the plot near the book’s end and it becomes increasingly hallucinatory. Every sentence of Kennedy’s fluid prose is to be savoured, but it leaves you feeling confused and wanting more.The Hive by Bee Wilson (JOHN MURRAY £7.99) Mesolithic cave paintings depicting hunter-gatherers foraging for bees’ nests tell us that mankind’s relationship with the honeybee is longstanding, and odes from throughout the ages tell us that it’s been an ardent one. The rest is all disconnected memories and haphazard drunken escapades There’s neither redemption, nor downfall.

He disappears into rehab in Canada for a while, and later so does she, but sometimes each has drunk the right amount and then they fit perfectly. How she came to be there, or came by the unfamiliar credit card that she’ll pay for her stay with, will probably always be a mystery. But she likes it that way
Her story, such as it is, is a love story. She meets a married dentist called Robert who is also a drinker. When she comes to, at the start of her story, she finds that she’s sitting at a breakfast table, with a hotel key chain in one hand and in the other, “quite the prettiest thing”, a glass of liquid Hannah does love liquids. She’s aware that she’s misplaced at least a day but, after 20 or so pages, she’s deduced that she’s in an English airport hotel, and that the ugly man loitering nearby shared her bed the night before. She’s perspicacious, funny and has an extraordinary command of poetic language, but she drinks so much that reality is only a passing acquaintance of hers.

For me, though, the accidental ironies of the rollicking “Didn’t the Lord deliver Daniel?” and “Wade in the Water” were too much too bear.jenny.gilbert independent.co.ukBirmingham Hippodrome, (0870 730 1234) Tues & Wed; Bradford Alhambra (01274 432000) Fri & Sat and touring. Paradise by A L Kennedy (VINTAGE £7.99)

Hannah Luckraft, a 36-year-old cardboard saleswoman, narrates Kennedy’s fourth novel to the best of her ability. You believe a man can fly.But as ever it’s Ailey that raises the roof. Revelations is not merely his personal greatest hit, it’s become an icon of black history with its clear, vibrant outlines defining the ecstasy of Southern Baptist faith. A single idea – using strobe lighting on its slowest setting to catch a soloist repeatedly mid-flight – is exploited simply and brilliantly. Personal gorgeousness scores high in this company, and Jamison’s new piece, Reminiscin’, aims to give everyone their moment of glory in a string of duets set to ballads sung by Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Krall and others Lovely, but too long The beauty of Caught, by David Parsons, is its brevity.

The guys flap the tails of absurd white wool overcoats like hyperactive gangsters, the women are slippery as fish, flicking midriff muscles most mortals don’t possess. David Parsons’s Shining Star plants tongue in cheek to show off the dancers’ Eighties’ disco prowess. The piece might look quite different on the more classical bodies of, say, Dutch National Ballet – but almost certainly not better.In the second programme it’s even harder to pick a highlight. Control is restored in Hans Van Manen’s Solo, three men taking turns to bowl through its fiendish reams of steps with a nonchalance that only supreme technical mastery allows.

Vespers, by the gloriously named Ulysses Dove, is a more tightly structured sextet for the women that begins and ends in the guise of a sober prayer meeting. In between, however, it erupts in a game of frantic musical chairs during which each worshipper gives vent to the wildest voodoo impulse, full-body delirium tremens and skirt rucked up to her ears. The first opens luminously with a neo-classical solo for company star Clifton Brown set to Wonder’s “If It’s Magic”, but its choreographer Judith Jamison then hands the baton to hip hop guru Rennie Harris and disco wallah Robert Battle and the piece loses focus. Bonus points, too, for the company’s canny decision to bring its own fabulous sound system.
Hard to say which is the better of the two evenings.