Kazuo Ishiguroの "The Unconsoled" を読んでいます。
His wife stopped but did not turn, and Hoffman and I stared at her back view as she stood there quite still in the low light of the corridor. Then Hoffman took a few steps towards her.
'The evening. It's a shambles. Why pretend it's anything else? Why continue to tolerate me? Year after year, blunder after blunder. After the Youth Festival, your patience with me was surely at its end. But no, you put up with me further. Then Exhibition Week. Still you put up with me. Still you give me another chance. Very well, I begged you, I know. Implored you for one further chance. And you didn't have the heart to refuse me. In a word, you gave me tonight. And what have I to show for it? The evening is a shambles.
上の引用箇所に2度出てきた "shambles" は複数形に見えますが不定冠詞の "a" が付いています。辞書で意味を確認します。
・Oxford English Dictionary: a situation in which there is a great lack of order or understanding: The press conference was a complete shambles.
・Collins Dictionary: If a place, event, or situation is a shambles or is in a shambles, everything is in disorder.: The economy is in a shambles.
・Vocabulary.com: Originally a word for a slaughterhouse, shambles now usually means "one heck of a mess," as in "You were supposed to clean your room, but it's still a shambles!"
When the job market is in a shambles, people have trouble finding work. When a supermarket is in a shambles, there might be melons and milk spilled all over the floor. If everyone in a classroom is talking and yelling at once, the class is a shambles because no one can hear each other or get any work done. People say things are "in shambles" or "a shambles" — they mean the same thing. However you say it, a shambles is chaotic, disorderly, out of hand, and off the hook — a major, five-alarm mess.
語源についてはONLINE ETYMOLOGY DICTIONARYから抜粋を紹介します。
In English, the sense evolved from "place where meat is sold" to "slaughterhouse" (1540s), then figuratively "place of butchery" (1590s), and, generally, "confusion, mess" (1901, usually in plural).
やっと "The Unconsoled" を読み終えました。主人公のMr Ryderがピアノ演奏の為に訪れたあるヨーロッバの都市での三日間の出来事はまさに "a shambles" であり、今まで読んだKazuo Ishiguro作品では私にとって唯一イラつく内容の小説でした。
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