The Takeover – Muriel Spark (1976)

Like The Hothouse on the East River – the last Muriel Spark novel I read – in The Takeover we find ourselves far from our more familiar London setting of many earlier Spark novels. The Driver’s Seat, another 1970s Spark novel that I read last year – was also set abroad, I wonder if this was a deliberate departure for Muriel Spark at this time, perhaps she had tired a little of writing about London and wanted to do something different. Wherever she was writing about, her sense of place is so good – her ability to create an atmosphere no doubt due to her knowledge of the places she was writing about, and she knew Italy well having lived in Rome and Tuscany. For in The Takeover we are in Italy, the shores of Lake Nemi, the resting place of the spirit of the Goddess Diana.As you can see above, I was a long way from Italy while I was reading The Takeover, but I was able to spend a bit of time in the sun.

The Takeover is a novel of some subtlety, and one that is hard to pin down – what exactly was Spark saying with this novel? It is a novel about money – among other things – it is rich in absurdity and cynicism, and the characters are all pretty horrible – and yet it is still an enjoyable read.

“How do you know when you’re in love?’ she said.
‘The traffic improves and the cost of living seems to be very low.”

Overlooking Lake Nemi, are three villas, owned by wealthy American Maggie Radcliffe, who has recently married for a third time. One Villa is occupied by Maggie’s son Michael and his young wife Mary. The second villa is rented by a rich Italian, Bernardini, his girlfriend Nancy Cowan, his son’s tutor. His son Pietro, his daughter Letizia, also live here, and the family have spent a lot of their own money on improvements to the villa. The third villa, the one with the best view, is inhabited by Englishman Hubert Mallindaine, and his secretary Pauline Thin. Maggie has loaned Hubert the Villa, he hasn’t paid a penny to her in rent – and is now refusing to leave. It is Hubert and this third villa that is the centre of all the trouble. Hubert is a sneaky, crook, self-serving and completely without conscience.

“Hubert had been uneasy about his position, really, for many years more than he now admitted when he thought or spoke of Maggie. ‘Like any other spoilt moneybags she used me when she needed me and then suddenly told me to go, to clear out of her house and her life. All my projects were based on her promises. We had an understanding…’ So he dramatised it in a nutshell, first to himself, then later, to Pauline Thin.”

However, it seems that Maggie is surrounded by people who want to swindle her or steal from her.

Maggie and her husband – leave Nemi, travelling to various glamorous sounding locations – Maggie leaves Hubert in no doubt though that she expects him to leave her property – even giving him a date by which she expects him to vacate. Hubert has other ideas.

Having grown up with some rather odd ideas from a couple of aunts, Hubert seems to be perfectly convinced that he is directly descended from the Goddess Diana. I got the feeling that this belief – like so much about Hubert is entirely bogus – and merely serves to get him what he wants. He establishes a religious cult, surrounding himself with people looking for free love. Hubert claims he has a divine right to the house because of its location. As well as Pauline, Hubert is visited by several gay, former secretaries – and two Jesuit priests who seems always to go everywhere as a pair.

We see Maggie, living in various other locations, with her husband who appears to be a fairly weak character, he tells Maggie to get rid of Hubert but does nothing himself to help her achieve this. Hubert is quite clearly hanging on in there, the absurdly complicated Italian property laws seems to be on his side. Unknown to Maggie, Hubert is busy having her Louis XVI chairs and Gaugin painting copied – pocketing the money he makes from the sales. Meanwhile Lauro, is a servant of Maggie’s – he previously worked for Hubert – but he too is after what he can get. Both Maggie and her daughter-in-law Mary are drawn into sexual intrigue with Lauro – and everything begins to get very complicated. Maggie suffers the loss of her jewels, and in time the battle to get her villa back begins to cost her a huge amount of money. Money, she must find a way of getting back. All this is set to a back drop of the changing economic climate of the 1970s, – the action taking place between 1973 and 1975.

This is a strange, sophisticated novel with a very 70s feel to it. There are so many layers to it, with themes of fakery, wealth, religion and corruption. It is as ever very readable.