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The Takeover
Book by Spark, Muriel
266 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1976
41 people are currently reading
349 people want to read
About the author
Muriel Spark
222 books1,289 followersDame Muriel Spark, DBE was a prolific Scottish novelist, short story writer and poet whose darkly comedic voice made her one of the most distinctive writers of the twentieth century. In 2008 The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Spark received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the Ingersoll Foundation TS Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, in recognition of her services to literature. She has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent. In 1998, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". In 2010, Spark was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize of 1970 for The Driver's Seat.
Spark received eight honorary doctorates in her lifetime. These included a Doctor of the University degree (Honoris causa) from her alma mater, Heriot-Watt University in 1995; a Doctor of Humane Letters (Honoris causa) from the American University of Paris in 2005; and Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, St Andrews and Strathclyde.
Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel, The Comforters, in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, published in 1961, and considered her masterpiece, was made into a stage play, a TV series, and a film.
Spark received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1965 for The Mandelbaum Gate, the Ingersoll Foundation TS Eliot Award in 1992 and the David Cohen Prize in 1997. She became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1993, in recognition of her services to literature. She has been twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, in 1969 for The Public Image and in 1981 for Loitering with Intent. In 1998, she was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". In 2010, Spark was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize of 1970 for The Driver's Seat.
Spark received eight honorary doctorates in her lifetime. These included a Doctor of the University degree (Honoris causa) from her alma mater, Heriot-Watt University in 1995; a Doctor of Humane Letters (Honoris causa) from the American University of Paris in 2005; and Honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, London, Oxford, St Andrews and Strathclyde.
Spark grew up in Edinburgh and worked as a department store secretary, writer for trade magazines, and literary editor before publishing her first novel, The Comforters, in 1957. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, published in 1961, and considered her masterpiece, was made into a stage play, a TV series, and a film.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews
April 4, 2024
I may be wrong, but it seems there are easier ways to avoid eviction than to invent an ancestry descended from the goddess Diana and found a religious cult on the basis of it. Yet this is exactly what Hubert Mallindaine—grifter, schemer, and bitchy gay—attempts to do.
This is one of the Muriel Spark novels I have struggled several times to get into, and I'm amazed I managed to get through it. The writing is scatterbrained, even for Spark, and the plot completely lacks focus. She tries very hard to interweave world/Italian current events—the oil crisis/recession in the early 1970s—hammering on dates and timeline, but to little avail. A terrible book by a beloved author remains a terrible book.
On second reading I embraced the sheer soapiness—jewel heists, adultery, a hysterical socialite, and a trio of gays with handguns—and the experience was a slightly more rewarding one. Chaos still reigned supreme throughout, and the ending remained disappointing. Bitchy gay, over and out.
This is one of the Muriel Spark novels I have struggled several times to get into, and I'm amazed I managed to get through it. The writing is scatterbrained, even for Spark, and the plot completely lacks focus. She tries very hard to interweave world/Italian current events—the oil crisis/recession in the early 1970s—hammering on dates and timeline, but to little avail. A terrible book by a beloved author remains a terrible book.
On second reading I embraced the sheer soapiness—jewel heists, adultery, a hysterical socialite, and a trio of gays with handguns—and the experience was a slightly more rewarding one. Chaos still reigned supreme throughout, and the ending remained disappointing. Bitchy gay, over and out.
January 26, 2024
05/2022.
From 1976
About rich people having to deal with thieves of huge sums, real estate and gold coins. Most of these robbers are friends and employees, but not the more spectacular ones. The subtle thefts of antique furniture and fine art called to mind Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. Speaking of long books. Muriel Spark is incredible but this was truly lengthy.
From 1976
About rich people having to deal with thieves of huge sums, real estate and gold coins. Most of these robbers are friends and employees, but not the more spectacular ones. The subtle thefts of antique furniture and fine art called to mind Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. Speaking of long books. Muriel Spark is incredible but this was truly lengthy.
March 2, 2020
I know I say this every time I review a Muriel Spark book, but her writing always improves my mood. 'The Takeover' is among her longer works, taking the reader into the milieu of leisured rich families in Italy. As usual with Spark, the rich people themselves have little idea of what's going on, while their servants and hangers-on pursue Machiavellian plots with varying levels of success. By her usual standards, this is a sprawling novel that comments on the 1973 Oil Crisis, evangelical church revivals, wealth inequality, sexual morality, and nationalism. Personally I found the discussions of wealth most appealing and astute:
It's worth noting that this was first published in 1976, before money fled further from tangibility into racks of servers.
Spark depicts the wealthy as simultaneously obsessed with the money, property, jewels, and art that they own and totally unable to keep track of it all. There is something delightfully satisfying about observing Maggie and her extended family being repeatedly swindled. Maggie herself is depicted as a charismatic but unbearable person, prone to histrionically accusing whoever's nearby of stealing from her. Hubert, Maggie's primary nemesis, has similar characteristics to her, tempered by much greater self-awareness and cunning. I found their politely-phrased yet vicious conflict over a beautiful villa of uncertain legal status very entertaining.
Mysterious and intangible, money of Maggie's sort was able to make lightning trips round the world without ever packing its bags or booking its seat on a plane. Indeed, money of any sort is, in reality, unspendable and unwasteable; it can only pass hands wisely or unwisely, or else by means of violence, and, colourless, odourless, and tasteless, it is a token for the exchange of colours, smells, and savours, for food and shelter and clothing and for representations of beauty, however beauty might be defined by the person that buys it.
It's worth noting that this was first published in 1976, before money fled further from tangibility into racks of servers.
Spark depicts the wealthy as simultaneously obsessed with the money, property, jewels, and art that they own and totally unable to keep track of it all. There is something delightfully satisfying about observing Maggie and her extended family being repeatedly swindled. Maggie herself is depicted as a charismatic but unbearable person, prone to histrionically accusing whoever's nearby of stealing from her. Hubert, Maggie's primary nemesis, has similar characteristics to her, tempered by much greater self-awareness and cunning. I found their politely-phrased yet vicious conflict over a beautiful villa of uncertain legal status very entertaining.
October 18, 2021
Had I read this in manuscript with no author name attached, I might have declared it to have been written by Iris Murdoch for the clutch of amoral characters, the love triangles, the peculiar religious society, the slight meanness of the attitude, and the detachment of the prose. Maggie Radcliffe is a rich American who owns three houses in the vicinity of Rome, one of which she rents out to Hubert Mallindaine, an effete homosexual who alleges that he is descended from the goddess Diana and founds a cult in her honour. He holds to this belief as fiercely as he defends his right to remain at Nemi even when Maggie decides she wants him out and employs lawyers to start eviction proceedings. There are odd priests, adulterous family members, scheming secretaries, and art and jewellery thieves, too. I wouldn’t say I’m a fan, but I liked this, my fourth novel by Spark, better than the rest. Italian bureaucracy makes for an amusing backdrop to what is almost a financial farce with an ensemble cast.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
November 6, 2021
Another devilishly entertaining story by this inimitable, outlandish genius. I don’t say genius lightly. Hers was a wholly distinctive talent whose singular “postmodern” fictions are unlike anything else.
She praised Georges Simenon as being a truly wonderful and marvellously readable writer who was “lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with the world he creates.” This quote inside the cover of my first Simenon stuck with me years ago because it was one of those articulations that struck me like a bolt. To me it refers to a harmony, an accord between an artist’s vision, intention, and what she’s producing on the page. It spoke to my ideas about what good artful writing is. I saw a connection to Calvino’s theory of lightness. It happens when a writer is so in tune with their art that the book is dazzlingly, gorgeously readable even while being complex and intricately networked, doing all the things. You come across this kind of gift rarely. It speaks to the kind of prose I like, the kind of authorial voices I like, the kinds of books I like. And to my aversion to purposely tricky and challenging books by writers like David Foster Wallace or William H. Gass or William Gaddis etc.
Spark said that about Simenon because she was all about it herself. She was described in the New Yorker thus: “Spark is a natural, a paradigm of that rare sort of artist from whom work of the highest quality flows as elementally as current through a circuit: hook her to a pen and the juice purls out of her.” Totally beside the fact that her wild stories are full of mischief and blackmail, writers and artists and hoity-toity characters who become embroiled in kidnappings and murders, religious cults and black magic, which is all so fun – what makes her such a pleasure for me is the clarity, effortless elegance and simplicity, supple fluidity and great economy of her style. There’s also the glittering wit and comedy, the razor sharp intelligence, of course. Her novels, as Updike said, “are as decisive as smashed glass.” The Takeover was a treat.
She praised Georges Simenon as being a truly wonderful and marvellously readable writer who was “lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with the world he creates.” This quote inside the cover of my first Simenon stuck with me years ago because it was one of those articulations that struck me like a bolt. To me it refers to a harmony, an accord between an artist’s vision, intention, and what she’s producing on the page. It spoke to my ideas about what good artful writing is. I saw a connection to Calvino’s theory of lightness. It happens when a writer is so in tune with their art that the book is dazzlingly, gorgeously readable even while being complex and intricately networked, doing all the things. You come across this kind of gift rarely. It speaks to the kind of prose I like, the kind of authorial voices I like, the kinds of books I like. And to my aversion to purposely tricky and challenging books by writers like David Foster Wallace or William H. Gass or William Gaddis etc.
Spark said that about Simenon because she was all about it herself. She was described in the New Yorker thus: “Spark is a natural, a paradigm of that rare sort of artist from whom work of the highest quality flows as elementally as current through a circuit: hook her to a pen and the juice purls out of her.” Totally beside the fact that her wild stories are full of mischief and blackmail, writers and artists and hoity-toity characters who become embroiled in kidnappings and murders, religious cults and black magic, which is all so fun – what makes her such a pleasure for me is the clarity, effortless elegance and simplicity, supple fluidity and great economy of her style. There’s also the glittering wit and comedy, the razor sharp intelligence, of course. Her novels, as Updike said, “are as decisive as smashed glass.” The Takeover was a treat.
November 30, 2025
Never read a bad Spark novel - well maybe aside from reading The Bachelors while in agonising pain in A&E meaning I couldn't really say if it's bad or good - but the extremely short, highly experimental 1970s Sparks are my favourite. She's seldom thought of as a political novelist, but this one shows how much she actually had her ear to the ground in that decade: the plot spins off weird, baroque interpretations of the American 'Charismatic' Christian revival, the rise to near-power of the Italian Communist Party, and incipient neoliberalism, with all old money turned into liquid.
August 26, 2024
This is one of those novels with both good and bad points which tends to leave one a feeling of mediocrity as a kind of compromise. Spark's great gift, or so it seems to me, is her rapier wit and ability, usually, to present humans and their foibles in a really funny way, usually without falling into the dangers of racist cliche or general misanthropy. Here, sad to say, the Italian and gay characters feel pretty stock rather than real and therefore are likely to offend. You can counter that the rich people are also pretty awful, but then you fall into misanthropy since there really aren't any likable characters at all in the book. The rich characters are also rather dumb, so I was denied my outrage as one of the poor and my desire to despise them on any sort of moralistic grounds. Instead we're presented with a lot of silly people doing rather silly things and while these things are generally amusing I was disallowed any deeper significance to their actions or illumination beyond snickering at their antics.
Thematically the novel seemed to revolve around riches and theft, with a nod to crackpot religions, but nothing ever came together to me to say anything profound about either wealth or theft. So, like the characters, you laugh here and there but are disappointed looking for some deeper meaning.
Then there's the plotting, which is great for about two thirds of the narrative and seems to be leading to an ending with perhaps those greater truths we've been seeking, but, no. The plot falls apart near the end and just ties up all of its loose ends in a quick bundle, as if Spark had grown suddenly bored with the whole thing and just couldn't be bothered to come up with any sort of a meaningful denouement.
Not so much bad as disappointing, given the other novels of hers that I've read and enjoyed far more than this one.
Thematically the novel seemed to revolve around riches and theft, with a nod to crackpot religions, but nothing ever came together to me to say anything profound about either wealth or theft. So, like the characters, you laugh here and there but are disappointed looking for some deeper meaning.
Then there's the plotting, which is great for about two thirds of the narrative and seems to be leading to an ending with perhaps those greater truths we've been seeking, but, no. The plot falls apart near the end and just ties up all of its loose ends in a quick bundle, as if Spark had grown suddenly bored with the whole thing and just couldn't be bothered to come up with any sort of a meaningful denouement.
Not so much bad as disappointing, given the other novels of hers that I've read and enjoyed far more than this one.
July 22, 2021
Each of Muriel Spark's books is different. She rarely repeats herself, but all her novels embody her acute intelligence, serrated sense of humor, and piercing eye. Her best works came in the first half of her writing career of 22 novels. At that mid-point she seems to have realized that she could rely solely on her technique, a certain level of sardonic artifice and cleverness that marks her artisanal novels. What she created were books that would appeal to most of her fans because we adore that voice, if I think not so much outside her cult. The later books are undeniably witty, brilliant, acute, but not emotional and garden-level human. Her work is not touching. Her characters are simply characters (though I suspect they were well-known to her -- they must be based on real people, just ones we'd never meet). I love her novels, having read all of them, but I recognize that she works in the circumscribed sphere of the "Muriel Spark novel," that over the years began to appeal to the intellect rather than the soul. It gradually became more difficult for the reader to identify with or care about her characters. The later books were more a matter of wit and sophistication than heart, a comedy of manners. The reader is more likely to think "That's funny!" than actually chuckle. Amusing but distant. The Takeover falls into this second group, with absurd, wealthy characters filling the roles in a mid-Seventies play. Spark poses mythology bumping heads with organized religion, the rich tormented by conmen and burglars, economies in transition, the appearance of reality that may actually be fake. Our heroine is beautiful, affluent, and free, modeled after the goddess Diana, but we never see below the surface and she never becomes real. As is true for virtually all the characters, and I'm not really sure I care if the wealthy are beset by those who want a little of the money of which they have so much. When late in the book there's an implausible kidnapping the reader doesn't even blink, as anything can happen in an absurd world. An entertaining and intelligent novel about very little.
October 2, 2016
Basically, this is about a pleasant but wimpy woman (Maggie) with money who fails to evict a rather affable asshole (Hubert) who's manspreading all over her property without paying rent because he's an entitled loser who thinks he's descended from the goddess Diana. Curiously, Maggie has a (third?) husband who is also kind of a light-weight. The property belongs to her and predates their arrangements, so he makes vague noises and harrumphing instead of being a He-Man spouse and just throwing the sucker out. Deadbeat Hubert becomes ever more entrenched and kooky. All rather odd if you ask me. Alright, the barely-a-comedy of Manners goes spinning out of control, and by the middle it's taken a lot of bizarre twists involving the property, the criminals, Gauguin, the help, the plans for Lauro's wedding feast, and Pauline enjoying kisses... Absolutely everyone in the cast is busily taking over something or swindling someone, and the level of absurdity is quite amusing. And then there's the cult of Diana...
It's no wonder Ms Spark was made a Dame of the British Empire. She is certainly one of its more delicious treasures.
It's no wonder Ms Spark was made a Dame of the British Empire. She is certainly one of its more delicious treasures.
August 9, 2022
I must have read something good by Muriel Spark once - why else would I have several unread Spark novels on my shelf? However, after this one I am certainly not in a hurry to reach out for them. It is a very confused and confusing novel that starts very well. There is also a good twist two-thirds into it, but then the pagan religion comes into it in a big way and things go haywire.
Not for me.
Not for me.
September 7, 2019
I read 'A Far Cry From Kensington' recently and thought it was tremendous, so I eagerly picked up another Muriel Spark. Unfortunately I didn't like this much. I didn't like any of the characters (I'd guess you aren't supposed to) and thought the whole story was a bit silly. Three quarters of the way through I really couldn't care what happened and so wasn't too disappointed when it finally limped to a weak close. I'd happily read another Muriel Spark but hopefully one more in keeping with AFCFK than this.
August 28, 2020
This is the only work of Muriel Spark I have read so far, and I can see she has a wicked, subtle sense of humour and her characters are life like eccentrics. The writing is polished and mature with a wit she clearly underplays.
I found the opening a bit mundane but the story soon picked up pace, a richly entertaining account of a wealthy American woman's machinations to evict a close male friend from one of her luxurious properties. Delightful intricate story of wealth and opportunism set in a corner of Italy. Everyone she meets turns out to be a swindler out to grab what they can of her vast fortune. But in the end we see our heroine is not quite as resource-less as she appears.
.Occasionally overdone and melodramatic, yet it was most enjoyable read. I guess I will seek out her other works – the most notable The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
February 5, 2024
Yes, there were some witty observations but it just didn’t engage me. I don’t need to like the characters in a book but I do want them to be intriguing - I had no interest in what would happen to these people. This has been on my shelves a long time and I am sure I must have previously started it and then set it aside. I have now done so for the second time!
May 31, 2025
Another fun Spark, unique in the themes it plays with: the slipperiness/deceptiveness of money, religious cults, bureaucratic mess… of course queerness is there and Spark takes this as a given. I liked how she put a foolish Italian nationalist character in there too. She also had to put in her two cents about American charismatics
June 17, 2020
My first Spark (Memento Mori) is still my favorite.
This was still enjoyable. Great characterizations (of course), but it didn't leave much of a lasting impression.
This was still enjoyable. Great characterizations (of course), but it didn't leave much of a lasting impression.
November 17, 2021
She is always good and this is one of her best. At times it's positively Murdochian. Religion, crime, sex, and wry humor. In other words, totally engaging.
October 31, 2017
This was entertaining.... a romp through the 70s. Lots a wicked wit. There were no "good guys" in this story. Nothing was quite what it seemed.
January 25, 2022
The only reason I stuck with this book is that I’m engaged in a project with my wife to read all of Spark’s works in the order they were published. Many have been wonderful but we both pretty much hated this one. If it had been a short novella, maybe, but even at 240 pages it felt way too long. As a general rule, Spark really dislikes most of her characters, but here she spent largely the whole book demonstrating what crooks, frauds and dupes they all are and that they deserved to be the target of con artists and thieves. I can’t see any larger theme to the book.
August 20, 2016
I very much enjoyed this darkly comic novel, which was nice after last year's disappointments The Hothouse by the East River and The Public Image.
This is in the same league as Loitering with Intent and Memento Mori in my opinion, which means a shared third place in Muriel Spark's oeuvre, after The Driver's Seat and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
This is in the same league as Loitering with Intent and Memento Mori in my opinion, which means a shared third place in Muriel Spark's oeuvre, after The Driver's Seat and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
September 24, 2016
OMG I didn't even get through the first chapter! If this book appeals to you, DO read the Kindle sample. If her writing style doesn't annoy you to pieces you might like it, but I COULD NOT STAND IT. PERHAPS very appropriate to the kind of people she is writing about, but I did not need the narration to be as affected as the characters.
December 5, 2021
1976. Spark, Scottish, born in Edinburgh 1918, died 2006 in Tuscany. Wrote 24 novels!
The Penguin book cover gives a subtitle: A parable of the pagan seventies.
Lovely book, on many levels.
The book mentions dates several times, 1973, 1974, then 1975. The Communists have just won elections in Italy; this is mentioned several times; the ultra-rich find it inconvenient. One of the young heiresses is for territorial nationalism, a current theme of the young left.
The main characters are Americans, and the others Italian. Crazy but clever Maggie is shown spending money like water, and is sometimes humorous as an extreme caricature. Actually the servant Lauro seemed the most interesting to me, he cleverly and diplomatically manages to please everyone. Unfortunately, Spark doesn't let us see inside him. Maybe she doesn't show us inside any of the characters; she leaves us to judge based on actions and what they say to each other.
Hubert is another unadmirable character but well portrayed. "He managed very well without sincerity and as little understood the lack of it as he missed his tonsils and his appendix..."69
I enjoyed Spark's language, especially how she incorporates slightly Italian-influenced phrasing. Also brief references to Italian customs, like the afternoon siesta, and how servants relate to their masters.
At some point I felt extra characters were being introduced that had no reason to be there. e.g. Berto's son Pino p 148. Definitely the novel is painting a whole scene, a series of scenes and milieus, rather than focusing on one or a few characters. We see a gathering of family planning the wedding of the daughter to Lauro; this is a middle-class family -- and differences are highlighted with the ultra-rich other characters.
Spark comments on the world financial situation:
90 "It was not in their minds that 1973 was the beginning of something new in their world: a change in the meaning of property and money. They all understood these were changing in value, and they talked of recession and inflation, of losses on the stock market, failures in business, bargains in real estate; they unquestioningly used the newspaper writers' figures of speech. They talked of hedges against inflation...They spoke of the mood of the stock market, the health of the economy as if these were living creatures with moods and blood. And thus they personalized and demonologized the abstractions of their lives, believing them to be fundamentally real. But it did not occur to those spirited and intelligent people that a complete mutation of our means of nourishment had already come into being where the concept of money and property were concerned, a complete mutation not merely to be defined as a collapse of the capitalist system, or a global recession, but such a sea change in the nature of reality as could not have been envisaged by Karl Marx or Sigmund Freud. Such a mutation that what were assets were to be liabilities and no armed guards could be found and fed sufficient to guard those armed guards who failed to protect the properties they guarded, whether hoarded in banks or built on confined territories, whether they were priceless works of art, or merely hieroglyphics registered in the computers. ..."
"Anna" writes:
"...taking the reader into the milieu of leisured rich families in Italy. As usual with Spark, the rich people themselves have little idea of what's going on, while their servants and hangers-on pursue Machiavellian plots with varying levels of success. By her usual standards, this is a sprawling novel that comments on the 1973 Oil Crisis, evangelical church revivals, wealth inequality, sexual morality, and nationalism. Personally I found the discussions of wealth most appealing and astute..."
"tortoise dreams" comments:
"The later books are undeniably witty, brilliant, acute, but not emotional and garden-level human. Her work is not touching. ......appeal to the intellect rather than the soul. It became more difficult for the reader to identify with or care about her characters. The later books were more a matter of wit and sophistication than heart, a comedy of manners. .......Amusing but distant."
I say, all true, but the book offers so much more. There are plenty of writers and books we can go to for emotions and identifying with. Spark gives us the world around them, the socio-economic settings in which they operate.
The Penguin book cover gives a subtitle: A parable of the pagan seventies.
Lovely book, on many levels.
The book mentions dates several times, 1973, 1974, then 1975. The Communists have just won elections in Italy; this is mentioned several times; the ultra-rich find it inconvenient. One of the young heiresses is for territorial nationalism, a current theme of the young left.
The main characters are Americans, and the others Italian. Crazy but clever Maggie is shown spending money like water, and is sometimes humorous as an extreme caricature. Actually the servant Lauro seemed the most interesting to me, he cleverly and diplomatically manages to please everyone. Unfortunately, Spark doesn't let us see inside him. Maybe she doesn't show us inside any of the characters; she leaves us to judge based on actions and what they say to each other.
Hubert is another unadmirable character but well portrayed. "He managed very well without sincerity and as little understood the lack of it as he missed his tonsils and his appendix..."69
I enjoyed Spark's language, especially how she incorporates slightly Italian-influenced phrasing. Also brief references to Italian customs, like the afternoon siesta, and how servants relate to their masters.
At some point I felt extra characters were being introduced that had no reason to be there. e.g. Berto's son Pino p 148. Definitely the novel is painting a whole scene, a series of scenes and milieus, rather than focusing on one or a few characters. We see a gathering of family planning the wedding of the daughter to Lauro; this is a middle-class family -- and differences are highlighted with the ultra-rich other characters.
Spark comments on the world financial situation:
90 "It was not in their minds that 1973 was the beginning of something new in their world: a change in the meaning of property and money. They all understood these were changing in value, and they talked of recession and inflation, of losses on the stock market, failures in business, bargains in real estate; they unquestioningly used the newspaper writers' figures of speech. They talked of hedges against inflation...They spoke of the mood of the stock market, the health of the economy as if these were living creatures with moods and blood. And thus they personalized and demonologized the abstractions of their lives, believing them to be fundamentally real. But it did not occur to those spirited and intelligent people that a complete mutation of our means of nourishment had already come into being where the concept of money and property were concerned, a complete mutation not merely to be defined as a collapse of the capitalist system, or a global recession, but such a sea change in the nature of reality as could not have been envisaged by Karl Marx or Sigmund Freud. Such a mutation that what were assets were to be liabilities and no armed guards could be found and fed sufficient to guard those armed guards who failed to protect the properties they guarded, whether hoarded in banks or built on confined territories, whether they were priceless works of art, or merely hieroglyphics registered in the computers. ..."
"Anna" writes:
"...taking the reader into the milieu of leisured rich families in Italy. As usual with Spark, the rich people themselves have little idea of what's going on, while their servants and hangers-on pursue Machiavellian plots with varying levels of success. By her usual standards, this is a sprawling novel that comments on the 1973 Oil Crisis, evangelical church revivals, wealth inequality, sexual morality, and nationalism. Personally I found the discussions of wealth most appealing and astute..."
"tortoise dreams" comments:
"The later books are undeniably witty, brilliant, acute, but not emotional and garden-level human. Her work is not touching. ......appeal to the intellect rather than the soul. It became more difficult for the reader to identify with or care about her characters. The later books were more a matter of wit and sophistication than heart, a comedy of manners. .......Amusing but distant."
I say, all true, but the book offers so much more. There are plenty of writers and books we can go to for emotions and identifying with. Spark gives us the world around them, the socio-economic settings in which they operate.
August 15, 2025
A hugely-enjoyable short novel by the reliable Muriel Spark.
The notes to my edition of EM Forster's "Howard's End" said that the titular house in that book was a character in itself. I wasn't sure I agreed in that case, but it's definitely true of this book. The (real) Grove of Nemi, near Rome, is both the setting for large parts of this novel, and a central character in it. In ancient times it was a shrine to the pagan goddess Diana, and according to Roman history/legend mad Emperor Caligula claimed to have seduced the goddess at one of his wilder orgies there. In "The Takeover", an American millionaire, Maggie Radcliffe, has some land and three properties there, the best of which is occupied by a former platonic lover of hers, an erstwhile playwright and impresario turned pretentious old pseud called Hubert Mallindaine. Hubert claims (and possibly even believes) that he is the descendant of Caligula and Diana, and also claims that before they drifted apart following Maggie's re-marriage, Maggie gave him the house in question. Maggie and her new husband, an Italian nobleman, disagree, and much of the plot centres around their efforts to evict the adhesive Hubert from what he now regards as his birthright/destiny.
Of course, this being a Muriel Spark novel, the plot is largely irrelevant, a black-comic farce simply serving as a framework for a collection of beautifully-constructed characters and sparkling dialogue.
All of the characters are flawed, some of them outright villains, and there is much deception, infidelity, betrayal, and sundry other bad behaviour to enjoy.
And as usual with this author, some delicious barbed observational touches.
** Stop here if you want to find your own. There are plenty in this book.
"There were four secretaries that summer: Damian Runciwell, Kurt Hakens, Lauro Moretti, Ian Mackay. Only one, Damian, did the secretarial work.";
"He managed very well without sincerity and as little understood the lack of it as he missed his tonsils and his appendix, which had been extracted long since.";
"And as she exploded further about Hubert, her husband was overcome by a tremendous jealousy; Maggie's emotions against Hubert were stronger by far than any she displayed towards himself.......he cared only lest Maggie felt something for Hubert and nothing for him.";
"'.......Lauro is our secretary in a very real sense. A secretary is one who keeps secrets.'" {It's true - check the dictionary definition.};
"Thus, like ministers of any other religion, he was estranged from reality in proportion as he mistook the nature of prayer, offering up his words of praise, of gratitude, penitence, intercession and urgent petition in the satisfaction that his god would reply in kind, hear, smile, and wave a wand."
Superb. If anyone needs a copy, I've managed to pick up three in charity shops whilst it's been on my long "to read" shelf !
The notes to my edition of EM Forster's "Howard's End" said that the titular house in that book was a character in itself. I wasn't sure I agreed in that case, but it's definitely true of this book. The (real) Grove of Nemi, near Rome, is both the setting for large parts of this novel, and a central character in it. In ancient times it was a shrine to the pagan goddess Diana, and according to Roman history/legend mad Emperor Caligula claimed to have seduced the goddess at one of his wilder orgies there. In "The Takeover", an American millionaire, Maggie Radcliffe, has some land and three properties there, the best of which is occupied by a former platonic lover of hers, an erstwhile playwright and impresario turned pretentious old pseud called Hubert Mallindaine. Hubert claims (and possibly even believes) that he is the descendant of Caligula and Diana, and also claims that before they drifted apart following Maggie's re-marriage, Maggie gave him the house in question. Maggie and her new husband, an Italian nobleman, disagree, and much of the plot centres around their efforts to evict the adhesive Hubert from what he now regards as his birthright/destiny.
Of course, this being a Muriel Spark novel, the plot is largely irrelevant, a black-comic farce simply serving as a framework for a collection of beautifully-constructed characters and sparkling dialogue.
All of the characters are flawed, some of them outright villains, and there is much deception, infidelity, betrayal, and sundry other bad behaviour to enjoy.
And as usual with this author, some delicious barbed observational touches.
** Stop here if you want to find your own. There are plenty in this book.
"There were four secretaries that summer: Damian Runciwell, Kurt Hakens, Lauro Moretti, Ian Mackay. Only one, Damian, did the secretarial work.";
"He managed very well without sincerity and as little understood the lack of it as he missed his tonsils and his appendix, which had been extracted long since.";
"And as she exploded further about Hubert, her husband was overcome by a tremendous jealousy; Maggie's emotions against Hubert were stronger by far than any she displayed towards himself.......he cared only lest Maggie felt something for Hubert and nothing for him.";
"'.......Lauro is our secretary in a very real sense. A secretary is one who keeps secrets.'" {It's true - check the dictionary definition.};
"Thus, like ministers of any other religion, he was estranged from reality in proportion as he mistook the nature of prayer, offering up his words of praise, of gratitude, penitence, intercession and urgent petition in the satisfaction that his god would reply in kind, hear, smile, and wave a wand."
Superb. If anyone needs a copy, I've managed to pick up three in charity shops whilst it's been on my long "to read" shelf !
September 30, 2017
Well, I don't know where to start. Odd tale, but I enjoyed it, and with Spark's usual very believeable and complicated characters. Her characters are real and full of foibles, so it can get to the point where you can't stand any of them. This book's a lot about the love and chase of money, and people posing about whatever way of thinking happens to be fashionable, but only as far as is convenient to them. There's this young woman, Letizia, who is a nationalist and keen on left-wing politics. She's a very well off young woman, but likes to go about helping out drug addicts.... until she wants to go on holiday and then she looks for someone to dump them with so she doesn't need to worry her head over him. A mere tiny example out of the book.
Set in Italy, it focuses on three villas at the coast, all built and owned by a wealthy American woman. In one villa there's her son, Michael, and wife, Mary. At another there's a rich guy and his two children (including Letizia), who are renting from the American, Maggie, and have spent a lot on the house in improving it. Then there's the third and home of the most irritating character in the book: Hubert Mallindaine. He's British, vain, incapable of real relationships, a leech and a liar and is under the impression that the world owes him everything and he shouldn't have to lift a finger to get it. He's living in the house, fully furnished, rent free, and considers it his right. Maggie tries for years to get him evicted but the complexities of Italian law in this book seem to mean nothing ever gets done. For example, she has an original Gaugin in the property. Hubert gets a copy made, sells the original and pockets the profit. Maggie later finds out that the original is being sold in Switzerland, and is furious at thinking she's been sold a fake. Hubert, who thinks the house and furniture is his god given right, then demands compensation from Maggie for "giving" him this counterfit painting to live with. Vile little toad. Full of stories told by a couple of mad aunts in the past, he's also come to the utterly convinced notion that he is the direct descendant of the goddess Diana, and therefore it is his birthright to be living on the land he is living on. He even starts a cult, which most people seem to attend for the easy sex, but he doesn't get it.
I won't go into all the "lovely" characters that come and go, forever trying to get one over one another for the sake of a lot of money. Many get their just desserts by the end of it. Certainly a very full bodied cast of characters here.
Set in Italy, it focuses on three villas at the coast, all built and owned by a wealthy American woman. In one villa there's her son, Michael, and wife, Mary. At another there's a rich guy and his two children (including Letizia), who are renting from the American, Maggie, and have spent a lot on the house in improving it. Then there's the third and home of the most irritating character in the book: Hubert Mallindaine. He's British, vain, incapable of real relationships, a leech and a liar and is under the impression that the world owes him everything and he shouldn't have to lift a finger to get it. He's living in the house, fully furnished, rent free, and considers it his right. Maggie tries for years to get him evicted but the complexities of Italian law in this book seem to mean nothing ever gets done. For example, she has an original Gaugin in the property. Hubert gets a copy made, sells the original and pockets the profit. Maggie later finds out that the original is being sold in Switzerland, and is furious at thinking she's been sold a fake. Hubert, who thinks the house and furniture is his god given right, then demands compensation from Maggie for "giving" him this counterfit painting to live with. Vile little toad. Full of stories told by a couple of mad aunts in the past, he's also come to the utterly convinced notion that he is the direct descendant of the goddess Diana, and therefore it is his birthright to be living on the land he is living on. He even starts a cult, which most people seem to attend for the easy sex, but he doesn't get it.
I won't go into all the "lovely" characters that come and go, forever trying to get one over one another for the sake of a lot of money. Many get their just desserts by the end of it. Certainly a very full bodied cast of characters here.
June 22, 2025
Some people swear by Spark. For myself I struggle to see what the fuss is about. There is just something about her writing that strikes me as off.
I suspect this one was meant to be a comedic novel. Its tone would certainly suggest that. However, its bittiness and lack of characters with whom the reader can be sympathetic - the book is peopled with an assortment of chancers, frauds, swindlers and charlatans - make it something of a chore to read.
Hubert Mallindaine claims to be a descendant of the union between the Roman Emperor Caligula and the goddess Diana. He is renting a villa at Nemi from Maggie Ratcliffe, fairly recently the new Marchesa di Tullio Friole, who also has a house in the vicinity as well as residences elsewhere. Maggie is much exercised by her collections of jewellery and valuables – paintings, Louis XV chairs etc. The local Italians are not too pleased about these foreigners having houses in the town.
Maggie wishes to evict Hubert but he has various ploys to avoid this, among them setting up a religion based on his claim to be descended from Diana. He treats his secretary Pauline contemptuously and is also systematically replacing Maggie’s paintings and chairs with copies/reproductions.
Maggie meanwhile is having sex with her factotum, Lauro, who is, Brian Morton’s Introduction tells us, “a priapic opportunist” (for which read ‘all-but rapist’) “and kleptomaniac.” In addition, Lauro has fathered a child on a local girl (but blames her as a calculating bitch) and without warning jumps on Maggie’s daughter-in-law Mary, giving her little choice but to succumb to his advance. He tells her that next time she should relax. Not one to brook dissent.
That Introduction describes the motley crew of thieves and conmen surrounding Maggie as, “All as respectably dressed and gentlemanly as the Devil must be in a Scottish narrative.”
Things get murkier as the narrative proceeds; it seems there are other claims on the land the houses are built on, while a dodgy financial adviser worms his way into Maggie’s affairs.
There was a review and article - one each - in The Guardian Weekend supplement on both Sat 07/06/25 and 14/06/25 about the latest biography of Spark (Frances Wilson’s Electric Spark – The Enigma of Muriel Spark. Personally I find her the complete opposite of electric.) The review comments on her elision, “Spark knew what to leave out.” Perhaps it is those “odd gaps” which I find so problematic about her œuvre.
I suspect this one was meant to be a comedic novel. Its tone would certainly suggest that. However, its bittiness and lack of characters with whom the reader can be sympathetic - the book is peopled with an assortment of chancers, frauds, swindlers and charlatans - make it something of a chore to read.
Hubert Mallindaine claims to be a descendant of the union between the Roman Emperor Caligula and the goddess Diana. He is renting a villa at Nemi from Maggie Ratcliffe, fairly recently the new Marchesa di Tullio Friole, who also has a house in the vicinity as well as residences elsewhere. Maggie is much exercised by her collections of jewellery and valuables – paintings, Louis XV chairs etc. The local Italians are not too pleased about these foreigners having houses in the town.
Maggie wishes to evict Hubert but he has various ploys to avoid this, among them setting up a religion based on his claim to be descended from Diana. He treats his secretary Pauline contemptuously and is also systematically replacing Maggie’s paintings and chairs with copies/reproductions.
Maggie meanwhile is having sex with her factotum, Lauro, who is, Brian Morton’s Introduction tells us, “a priapic opportunist” (for which read ‘all-but rapist’) “and kleptomaniac.” In addition, Lauro has fathered a child on a local girl (but blames her as a calculating bitch) and without warning jumps on Maggie’s daughter-in-law Mary, giving her little choice but to succumb to his advance. He tells her that next time she should relax. Not one to brook dissent.
That Introduction describes the motley crew of thieves and conmen surrounding Maggie as, “All as respectably dressed and gentlemanly as the Devil must be in a Scottish narrative.”
Things get murkier as the narrative proceeds; it seems there are other claims on the land the houses are built on, while a dodgy financial adviser worms his way into Maggie’s affairs.
There was a review and article - one each - in The Guardian Weekend supplement on both Sat 07/06/25 and 14/06/25 about the latest biography of Spark (Frances Wilson’s Electric Spark – The Enigma of Muriel Spark. Personally I find her the complete opposite of electric.) The review comments on her elision, “Spark knew what to leave out.” Perhaps it is those “odd gaps” which I find so problematic about her œuvre.
February 7, 2022
SUMMARY - Pretty-ugly, and probably best read as an antidote to ever wanting money or possessions.
3.5. The heat haze shimmers as the Machiavellian plotting simmers, in this daggers drawn tale of wide-smiling back-stabbers. It's good. Hubert's menacing suavity pops from the page, and Maggie develops to become more than poise and presence. Lauro plays the part of an all Italian Stanley, and even the alternately lounging and tongue-babbling extras seem more present than usual for Spark.
At least one reviewer on Goodreads has already said that read blind they might have mistaken this for an Iris Murdoch. Therein lies my problem, because while I am gladly companion-reading my way through Murdoch and Spark's novels at the same time, it was my least favoured impressions of Murdoch's novels that seem to be present here. Murdoch tends to lose me when her characters continually detatch and reattach like a bee around heather. Picturesque yes; but emotionally compelling? No.
Interesting enough themes are explored on the claims that friends and lovers might legitimately continue to claim on one another through their various shades of connectedness and disconnectedness. Maggie's lavish and easily pilfered jewels take the point to cartoonish excess, and are not the only things taken without consent - images, unborn babies, whole houses, sex, money, and reputations are misapropriated or stolen by the selfish and indeed criminal actions of the Lauro, Hubert, Maggie and others.
Again Spark takes a tangent with 'The Takeover' that is far enough from the nunnery-set-Nixon-satire before ('The Abbess of Crewe') to be a new imaginative vista, even while its elements are recognisably Sparkian. There is the added flavour of Murdoch here, with libidinous layabouts trapped by their own choices. Compared to Murdoch it is more notably steeped in 1970s counterculture, which reads as considerably more authentically contemporary than Murdoch's almost willfully arcane creations. In contrast the clothes, the cars, the travel, the music and the permissiveness is evocative in 'The Takeover', even while the book itself is quite deliberately ugly.
It's not as satisfyingly neat as some, but it still transported me.
3.5. The heat haze shimmers as the Machiavellian plotting simmers, in this daggers drawn tale of wide-smiling back-stabbers. It's good. Hubert's menacing suavity pops from the page, and Maggie develops to become more than poise and presence. Lauro plays the part of an all Italian Stanley, and even the alternately lounging and tongue-babbling extras seem more present than usual for Spark.
At least one reviewer on Goodreads has already said that read blind they might have mistaken this for an Iris Murdoch. Therein lies my problem, because while I am gladly companion-reading my way through Murdoch and Spark's novels at the same time, it was my least favoured impressions of Murdoch's novels that seem to be present here. Murdoch tends to lose me when her characters continually detatch and reattach like a bee around heather. Picturesque yes; but emotionally compelling? No.
Interesting enough themes are explored on the claims that friends and lovers might legitimately continue to claim on one another through their various shades of connectedness and disconnectedness. Maggie's lavish and easily pilfered jewels take the point to cartoonish excess, and are not the only things taken without consent - images, unborn babies, whole houses, sex, money, and reputations are misapropriated or stolen by the selfish and indeed criminal actions of the Lauro, Hubert, Maggie and others.
Again Spark takes a tangent with 'The Takeover' that is far enough from the nunnery-set-Nixon-satire before ('The Abbess of Crewe') to be a new imaginative vista, even while its elements are recognisably Sparkian. There is the added flavour of Murdoch here, with libidinous layabouts trapped by their own choices. Compared to Murdoch it is more notably steeped in 1970s counterculture, which reads as considerably more authentically contemporary than Murdoch's almost willfully arcane creations. In contrast the clothes, the cars, the travel, the music and the permissiveness is evocative in 'The Takeover', even while the book itself is quite deliberately ugly.
It's not as satisfyingly neat as some, but it still transported me.
August 11, 2023
A few years ago, I started reading all of Muriel Spark's novels, in chronological order. This was my fourteenth, and I'm glad I took up my little project again. The Takeover might be my favorite Spark novel so far.
This edition (of the Polygon collected novels from 2018) comes with an absurd introduction by Brian Morton in which he compares The Takeover to William Gaddis' JR, because both books were published in 1975/76 (already stretching the similiarities), and both are about money.
The fact is that money has only ever a cartoonish quality in Spark's writing. All the novels I've read so far are about power, and money happens to be the easiest and (as Spark's heroine Maggie would have it) most vulgar symbol of power. The Takeover is a very entertaining novel about constant shifts in power dynamics, against the backdrop of the global power shift of the oil crisis in 1973. Spark narrates everything in the context of demonstrations of power: from sexualized assault to jewelry theft, from shady real estate deals to religious cults. This can be jarring, but I think it works, because she's not downplaying the devastating effects of assault and abuse. As a matter of fact, her work reads like a constant struggle to find the adequate artistic expression for the cruelties and indignities of power struggles.
For The Takeover, she comes down on the side of the cartoon-like. The novel reminds me of the better Tintin albums, with its capers, its disguises, its hapless police detectives, lovingly drawn side-characters and swiftly changing glamorous locales. At one point, there's a smashed guitar hanging from a tree after an orgy, like the unpopular bard's lute in an Asterix comic.
This edition (of the Polygon collected novels from 2018) comes with an absurd introduction by Brian Morton in which he compares The Takeover to William Gaddis' JR, because both books were published in 1975/76 (already stretching the similiarities), and both are about money.
The fact is that money has only ever a cartoonish quality in Spark's writing. All the novels I've read so far are about power, and money happens to be the easiest and (as Spark's heroine Maggie would have it) most vulgar symbol of power. The Takeover is a very entertaining novel about constant shifts in power dynamics, against the backdrop of the global power shift of the oil crisis in 1973. Spark narrates everything in the context of demonstrations of power: from sexualized assault to jewelry theft, from shady real estate deals to religious cults. This can be jarring, but I think it works, because she's not downplaying the devastating effects of assault and abuse. As a matter of fact, her work reads like a constant struggle to find the adequate artistic expression for the cruelties and indignities of power struggles.
For The Takeover, she comes down on the side of the cartoon-like. The novel reminds me of the better Tintin albums, with its capers, its disguises, its hapless police detectives, lovingly drawn side-characters and swiftly changing glamorous locales. At one point, there's a smashed guitar hanging from a tree after an orgy, like the unpopular bard's lute in an Asterix comic.
September 14, 2018
The Takeover by Muriel Spark - Good
Another weird and wonderful book read as part of #ReadingMuriel2018
There isn't a single character in this book that is appealing or has any redeeming features. Every single one is spoiled and self indulgent believing that the world owes them something. As such the whole book is how they pit themselves against each other, trying to score points or swindle or seduce. Now that could be the scene for a horrible, unpleasant, book, but this is very readable. You just hope that by the end they will all get their comeuppance.
Set in Nemi, Italy, home of the cult of Diana, Maggie has bought land and three houses. She lives in one with her husband, son and daughter-in-law. Rents one out to Emilio Bernadini, his son and daughter and their English tutor. The third she has foolishly let Hubert Mallindaine and his secretary live in. He believes he is a descendant of the goddess Diana and is trying to resurrect the cult. Maggie wants her house back, Hubert has no intention of leaving....and so the manoeuvring begins.
This is all happening against the back drop of the oil crisis of the early 1970s and soon they all find themselves in difficult circumstances one way or another.
Another weird and wonderful book read as part of #ReadingMuriel2018
There isn't a single character in this book that is appealing or has any redeeming features. Every single one is spoiled and self indulgent believing that the world owes them something. As such the whole book is how they pit themselves against each other, trying to score points or swindle or seduce. Now that could be the scene for a horrible, unpleasant, book, but this is very readable. You just hope that by the end they will all get their comeuppance.
Set in Nemi, Italy, home of the cult of Diana, Maggie has bought land and three houses. She lives in one with her husband, son and daughter-in-law. Rents one out to Emilio Bernadini, his son and daughter and their English tutor. The third she has foolishly let Hubert Mallindaine and his secretary live in. He believes he is a descendant of the goddess Diana and is trying to resurrect the cult. Maggie wants her house back, Hubert has no intention of leaving....and so the manoeuvring begins.
This is all happening against the back drop of the oil crisis of the early 1970s and soon they all find themselves in difficult circumstances one way or another.
July 14, 2023
One of the more forgettable entries in an oeuvre otherwise studded with five-star pearls, The Takeover is a meandering novel set among the grasping upper classes in Italy. Spark’s usual economy with plot and character falters here, as the writer is seduced by the splendour and opulence she describes (Spark moved to Italy in the 1970s and mingled with the crème of the expat literati), and thoroughly amused by the mannerisms of her unlikeable cast of entitled super-rich idlers, squabbling over their mansions and counterfeit Gaugins. As a satire on this cast of person, the novel is no White Lotus, the comedy is rather too mild and fond to really wound as Spark usually does with a wicked smile in her other work.
March 26, 2024
Grotesk, maar helaas al te realistisch boek over 'the filthy rich'; onnozel, amoreel en narcistisch, wier juwelen te duur zijn om comfortabel te verzekeren. Mensen die 'werken' aan hun zongebruinte teint. Die hun tijd vullen met diners, overspel, golf op Sicilië, naar de sauna in Zwitserland, in NY een advocatenkantoor van een paar verdiepingen bezitten om hun bezittingen water te geven, die vrienden een huis vol kunst schenken, dat deze laten namaken en verpatsen. Een milieu dat charlatans, dieven en profiteurs prikkelt om zijn schatten onder de neus van verveelde bewakers weg te halen. Maar geen nood, want bedriegers zijn er om bedrogen te worden. Intussen mag de (buiten)wereld in brand staan.
January 8, 2018
3.5 stars. Another Muriel Spark novel that would appeal mainly to Spark fans. Good dialogue and interesting characters. Set in Italy around the lake at Nemi in the early 1970s. Maggie, a rich woman is trying to make her tenant, Hubert, leave her house. It becomes quite a complicated matter! Maggie is swindled and robbed by a number of people. There is funny moments with two jesuit priests. Hubert believes he is a descendant from the goddess Diana and attains a following of worshippers. The plot is zany. Maggie is robbed of land, art and furniture but somehow remains upbeat. A fun read.
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