Book Review: More Than Love: An Intimate Portrait of My Mother, Natalie Wood by Natasha Gregson Wagner (2020)

Cover of More Than Love, by Natasha Gregson Wagner, 2020.

Actress and author Natasha Gregson Wagner.

Natasha Gregson Wagner’s memoir More Than Love: An Intimate Portrait of My Mother, Natalie Wood was released in May, at the same time the documentary she produced about her mother’s life, What Remains Behind premiered. Both the book and the documentary are essential for fans of Natalie Wood, as they give us an idea of who the woman behind the iconic movies was. 

More Than Love is a memoir about loss, and it’s often a heartbreaking book to read. As Gregson Wagner writes at the beginning of the book: “Losing my mother was the defining moment of my life. No other event would ever again so sharply etch its mark upon my soul, or so completely color the way I navigate the world, or leave my heart quite as broken.” (p.4) 

Natasha’s father was the British agent Richard Gregson, and her mother was of course, the gorgeous and talented actress Natalie Wood. Wood filed for divorce from Gregson in 1971, when Natasha was less than a year old. The following year, Wood remarried her first husband, actor Robert Wagner. Natasha got along very well with both her dad and her stepdad, and she refers to them as “Daddy Gregson” and “Daddy Wagner.” 

Young Natasha had a happy childhood, and the Wood/Wagner house was filled with family, friends, and lots of activity. But as Natasha grew older, she worried about her mother more and more. When Wood and Wagner went out to dinner, Natasha would often call the restaurant in order to speak to her mother and make sure that she was okay, and to ask when her parents would be coming home. Of course, Natasha’s premonitions that something bad would happen to her mother came true when her mother drowned off the coast of Catalina Island on November 29, 1981. Natalie Wood was 43 years old, and Natasha was 11. 

More Than Love chronicles Gregson Wagner’s life and her struggles to deal with her mother’s loss. Gregson Wagner became an actress as well, and the book reveals how she has used her work as an actress as a continuing connection to her mother. Ultimately, the book comes to a happy conclusion, as Gregson Wagner is now happily married and has a daughter, Clover. It’s clear that Gregson Wagner finds motherhood to be an extremely fulfilling role. 

More Than Love isn’t simply a book about a tragedy: it's a book about the after effects of a tragedy. For the survivors, those after effects linger on long after the tragedy itself. Gregson Wagner is an excellent writer, and she takes us through all the difficult emotions she’s had to deal with since her mother’s death. More Than Love isn’t just a ghost-written celebrity book with nothing to say: it’s an emotional catharsis as Natasha Gregson Wagner puts her soul down on the page.

In the years since she’s become a mother, Gregson Wagner has also taken a more active role in managing and shaping her mother’s legacy. That includes launching a perfume, co-authoring the 2016 coffee table book Natalie Wood: Reflections on a Legendary Life, and now the documentary and More Than Love. By sharing her stories of her legendary mother, Gregson Wagner has taken the focus off of her mother’s tragic death and restored the focus to where it should be: on her life and her work.