The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, 2011 (recommend)

Elevator Pitch Summary: This is a powerful story of a man in his youth and later years packed into 163 pages.  The story is elegantly told, unfolds at a good pace and has an interesting twist at the end. A Booker Prize winner, I recommend this book.

Read this if you're in the mood for: A well written book that will make you think about your life and actions, and whether you're average as the protagonist concludes himself to be. A book that will increase your vocabulary.  (Books by English authors tend to do that.) 

A core theme of the book is time as it lays out the life of a man.  It notes how deceptive and misleading time can be, putting into perspective one's memories and past.

The novel begins with the protagonist, Tony Webster, as a teenage and the circle of friends that he falls into.  These chapters are funny and contain insightful observations about youth that Barnes is so good at identifying and capturing.

For example, a young Webster observes that "[o]n our behalf they [parents] dreaded the closeness of adolescent friendship, the predatory behavior of strangers on trains, the lure of the wrong kind of girl.  How far their anxieties outran our experience."

The boys go off to university and Tony gets a girlfriend, who becomes a central character in the book.

He remains in touch with his childhood friends, but he and his mates end up taking different paths in life and losing touch until he hears the sad news that one of his friends has taken his own life.

Fast forward forty years or so, and Webster is a divorced father who receives news that brings back memories from the past and the mysterious circumstances surrounding his friend's suicide.

He begins reminiscing about the past, and out of loneliness or curiosity or something else or both, he is drawn to reconnecting with his past and uncovering the mystery around his friend's suicide decades ago.

Digging into the past and uncovering the truth is where the twist comes in and the protagonist realizes the impact of his actions over the course of the years.