I'm especially pleased that the Catholic Charismatic movement is so well lampooned in this novel. It is engaging and witty writing.

The wealthy Maggie Radcliffe allowed Hubert Mallindaine to stay in one of the houses she owns in Nemi while he was helping her with her pictures and antiques, but now that she's got married again she doesn't really need him any more, and she'd quite like to have someone in the house who actually pays rent occasionally. But Hubert - who implausibly claims descent from Diana Nemorensis and the Emperor Caligula, and is in the process of reviving the Diana cult in Nemi - is proving rather difficult to shift. Throw in some Italian aristocrats, a few of Hubert's discarded boyfriends, a couple of freeloading Jesuits, assorted thieves and several handfuls of Frazer's Golden Bough, and you end up with a farcical comedy of crime and deception that could almost be a P.G. Wodehouse plot (apart from all the sex: just about everyone in this story is sleeping with everyone else, without distinction of age or sex...).

Spark enjoys herself sending up the foibles of the super-rich, who can face up to anything with equanimity except the prospect of losing some of their money, the martyrdom of the Italian upper classes to the dictates of good taste, the quirks of the Italian legal system, the decadence of the seventies, and - because why not? - the charismatic movement in the Catholic Church. Maybe a bit less focussed than some of Spark's other books, but still quite fun. ( )

The only other novel by Muriel Spark I've ever read is "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie." That was a well-oiled, beautifully designed contraption of a book, and "The Takeover" is something else. Not that Spark's interest in manners, respectability, and social codes had diminished: there's nothing that the moneyed characters in "The Takeover" fear more than a scandal. But for a book that's mostly about a family's imminent, spectacular financial downfall, it drifts quite a bit, seemingly taking on its setting's warm, indolent Italian-resort-town atmosphere. It's characters aren't exactly likable, but I get the feeling that "The Takeover" is less about them than about the hangover from the wild, intellectually unhinged nineteen sixties. In some ways, "The Takeover" reads like a Robert Stone novel of a surprisingly genteel mien, with all of the swear words expunged.

Spark singles out cults and charismatic movements of all kinds for criticism, often from a specifically Catholic perspective, and there's a bit of a thread in the book about the dangers of charlatanism and of the voluntary abandonment of a search for truth. But this storyline probably isn't as fleshed out as it could have been. I'd also argue that "The Takeover" is really a book about the Oil Crisis of 1973 and the long-term economic slowdown it precipitated: a crisis of global capitalism whose effect can be felt, in some ways, in the present day. Considering that the novel was written just two or three years after the embargo shook the financial world, this makes Spark seem remarkably prescient. The battle lines already seem sketched out there between the immensely wealthy, globe-trotting Radcliffe family and the Italy-for-Italians militant nationalist politics of Letizia, their neighbor's daughter. The joke, or perhaps the sad irony of this, is that she's got just a bit less money than the people she criticizes as parasites on her beloved homeland. Beyond that, there's a lot of post-hippie dissolution about: drugs, orgies, weird faux-earth-worshiping cults, frightening rumors of kidnappings and social upheaval, and what I can only imagine are lots awful fashions and embarrassing haircuts. "The Takeover is, of course, well-written, but also a product of its confusing, unstable time. Recommended only if you like that sort of thing, or Muriel Spark in general. ( )

Spark's novels are consistently excellent reads on a stylistic level as well a thematic level. Here she tackles wealth, the power that comes with it, its pretensions and façades, and its implication on a global scale especially in 1973 with the oil crisis. And all this in her seemingly-effortless signature wit. ( )

Being an enthousiastic Spark-reader, this book had me dissappointed. It displays one the few flaws I seem to find unforgivable in any book: the hoarding of improbable events and personalities in a realistic setting. Everything seems to be painted with too heavy a brush, some of which may qualify as satire, but which in the end is neither funny nor enticing. Nothing wrong with the language, of course, which is fluently written and does its share to keep you reading even though the characters are exasparating and unreal. And yes, some of the conversations (a Spark specialty) are hilarious. Still, it's all far too unlikely for comfort and with the protagonists not providing any development, the implausible proceedings ultimately just annoy. By far the least succesful novel I have read of this writer. ( )