8.4 /10 1 Votes
5/5 Barnes & Noble Language English Pages 190 Originally published 1976 Page count 190 Country United Kingdom | 3.4/5 Goodreads Cover artist Peter Goodfellow Publication date 1976 ISBN 0-14-004596-1 Publisher Macmillan Publishers OCLC 4570177 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback) Muriel Spark books Territorial Rights, Reality and Dreams, The Bachelors, The Hothouse by the Ea, Memento Mori | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Takeover is a novel by the Scottish author Muriel Spark. It was first published in 1976.
Contents
It is set in Nemi, Italy between 1973 and 1975. The author had moved to Italy as a permanent resident in the late 1960s.
Plot summary
Three large villas overlooking Lake Nemi are owned by the wealthy, glamorous American Maggie Radcliffe. One is occupied by her son and daughter-in-law. A second is leased by an Italian doctor and his two children. The third is occupied by the eccentric Hubert Mallindaine, who believes himself to be the descendant of the offspring of the Emperor Caligula's mythical liaison with Diana. Once a trusted friend of Maggie Radcliffe, Hubert is now an unwelcome house-sitter whom she wants evicted as quickly as possible.
Hubert is not so easily removed, however, and his intransigence and liquidation of Maggie's assets in the house (including a Gauguin) is mirrored in the loss of much of Maggie's wealth, from burglary to outright embezzlement of her entire estate. Events conspire however to cause both to review what they consider important.
Themes
As with several other Spark novels, one theme is the disintegration of 'timeless' values in modern society, in this instance the role of religion (represented by Hubert's bogus Diana cult and two indolent, chortling Catholic priests) and the role of money: mostly unseen, or buried. A larger-scale backdrop is provided by the 1973 oil crisis.
Hubert's secretary, Pauline Thin, shares her surname with the Edinburgh-based stationer James Thin, who supplied Spark's notebooks in which she wrote all her novels in longhand.