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Members of THE WHITE REVIEW editorial team, contributors, and friends of the magazine reveal the books they’ve been reading and revisiting in 2019     Katherine Angel, author of Daddy Issues   Vigdis Hjorth’s Will and Testament (tr Charlotte Barslund, Verso), about childhood abuse and language, was riveting I was elated by Ben Lerner’s beautiful, high-wire The Topeka School (Granta), and Deborah Levy’s intricate The Man Who Saw Everything (Hamish Hamilton) blew my mind Andrea Long Chu’s Females (Verso) was bracing and smart; Sophie Lewis’s Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family (Verso) exciting and challenging Sinead Gleeson’s Constellations (Picador), Anne Boyer’s The Undying (Allen Lane), and Jenn Ashworth’s Notes Made While Falling (Goldsmiths Press) were brilliant on illness, and much more besides I read Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones (Picador) for the first time and loved its playful treatment of painful themes Johny Pitts’s Afropean: Notes from Black Europe (Allen Lane) was a fascinating exploration of aspects of Europe getting little air-time in the current discourse And I was rooted to the spot by Chanel Miller’s luminous Know My Name (Viking), on sexual assault, misogyny, and race      Chloe Aridjis, author of Sea Monsters   I loved Self-Portrait by Celia Paul (Jonathan Cape) and Optic Nerve by María Gainza (tr Thomas Bunstead, Harvill Secker) Each portrays, with dreamy intensity, a tight intertwining of art and the female psyche – Celia Paul as a painter herself, and María Gainza as a woman obsessed with paintings and the stories that haunt them I was also very struck by Doorways: Women, Homelessness, Trauma and Resistance by Bekki Perriman (House Sparrow Press), a book that fills you with rage and sadness Alongside interviews with homeless women Perriman includes photographs of some of the many doorways in which she herself, homeless for years, sought refuge      Julia Armfield, author of SALT SLOW   I’ve had a strange year in fiction, returning to old favourites a lot for novel inspiration in between trying to keep up with as much new writing as possible My favourites of the year are a total jumble – Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (Picador) was a stand-out, one of the most purely funny, sexy, warm-hearted novels I’ve read in years There was also Elizabeth Strout’s Olive, Again (Viking), a sequel I truthfully hadn’t thought I wanted