The Noise of Time - Julian Barnes

A fictional biography of Dmitri Shostakovich - written more as an autobiography, or at least as an "omnipresent narrator" voice. 
On one side, it is an examination of the choices and pressures an artist faces in a totalitarian system, an examination of the perceived role of art in such a society vs. the artist's own vision of his path.
A portrayal of the mediocrity that such a system engenders and rewards.  The muddled thinking that grows out of a totalitarian mythology (Americans suffer from the same kind of muddled thinking due to mythology...)
Another side of the book is again about aging, and how aging changes how you perceive yourself and the world around you. Again rather depressing - the best that can be said is that you survive...

The Only Story - Julian Barnes

A story exploring a love story between a young man and a much older woman.  An exploration of the limits of love, of how life's threads become progressively more complex as you get older.  A look at how perspectives change as you age and accumulate experience.  Rather depressing in its insights.
Didn't really warm to the story, however.

The Return of the Dancing Master - Henning Mankell

Reads like an earlier novel, a not quite crystallized version of his style and characters, but still interesting.  The focal issue in this novel is latent fascism and nazism in modern Swedish society.  During WW2,  there was a strong nazi/fascist movement in Sweden, and quite a few Swedes joined the Nazis to fight in the war.  (Like Finland, part of the motivation was also fear of being swallowed up by Russia.)

One Good Turn - Kate Atkinson

A writer I heard about on the radio.  For me, the story dragged.  Too many asides to the story filled with details that I did not find interesting.  Perhaps it was the characters themselves?   Another of those stories with characters' lives crossing fortuitously.  Unfortunately,  I found it hard to be interested in their lives for some reason. 
Try one more...

All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr

A novel following the parallel lives of a blind French girl and a young German radio operator that finally cross in the siege of St. Malo at the end of WW2.
An enjoyable, fairly light read.  A few too many fortuitous connections and events in the course of the book.  The main characters are interesting sketches.

Amsterdam - Ian McEwan

The way of art vs. the way of  politics and engagement.  Beneath the stances of principle and ideals, the same old self-centred, petty selves.
A rather humorous ending...

Not my favourite McEwan book, though.  To my mind, not as successful at building real characters around these central ideas.