The Takeover is a novel by the Scottish author Muriel Spark. It was first published in 1976. 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 who has recently remarried to Italian Marchese Berto. One villa is occupied by her son Michael and daughter-in-law Mary where manservant Lauro works. A second is leased by an Italian doctor Emilio Bernardino and his two children Letizia and Pietro taught by English tutor Nancy Cowan (who is also Bernardino's lover). The third is occupied by the eccentric Hubert Mallindaine with his secretary Pauline Thin. Hubert 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 Louis XIV Chairs, and a Gauguin painting) 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. Reception Kirkus Reviews states that the novel is "An elegant, wayward divertimento lighter than the soft Italian air of the Alban hills....Muriel Spark's most ambitious in some years. It can be read as a decorative, self-perpetuating comedy of urbane truths and consequences, or, as also intended, as a reprise and renewal of pagan mythology when our own Christian morality has been so decadently depreciated. Margaret Drabble writing in The New York Times writes "We all like gloss: we like to read of those so wealthy that they can no longer afford to insure their possessions, and we love to