Sophie Gravia: Scottish nurse rewriting the rules of modern dating

The background to Scotland’s most unlikely literary success story is as rude and glorious as the clumsy carnality that unfolds on the page. How, during lockdown, she began to write Facebook blogs detailing her encounters navigating the treacherous currents of on-line dating. And how these experiences began to resonate with friends and strangers alike as young women (and some men) recognised all the insecurities, humour and unintended consequences of fast dating in the West of Scotland.

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Zara Smith, the hero of her books, is an endearing combination of sexiness, vulnerability and take-no-prisoners Glaswegian wit. After one encounter with a young professional who’s turned into a bit of a roaster, she realises too late that his dad, with whom he shares a home, had been a guest in her own bed just the previous week.

A mature and cautious chap such as myself is dicing with danger when seeking to ask a woman half his age about intergenerational family love triangles. There’s an obvious question hanging in the air, but I opt for bashful cowardice. “Um, err, so, ah … were these encounters based on fact,” I ask with a degree of trepidation.

“You mean, was it me,” she replies, black affronted, but enjoying my discomfort. “Perish the thought,” I say.

“It was actually one of the girls who was responding to my blog. This had actually happened to her and I knew I had to get it into the book.”

The third book in the Glasgow Kiss series, ‘Meet Me in Milan’, is published later this month. She’s currently working on her fourth novel, which doesn’t feature Zara or Glasgow, but the themes are similar. “It’s set in London,” she says, “and it’s a comedy about screwed-up romance. But although it’s not set in Glasgow the main character is Glaswegian. It’s important to keep the Glasgow patter going.”

If anything, What Happens in Dubai is even raunchier than its predecessor. Does she worry that people might think it’s all autobiographical? “Not at all; I’m entirely fine with that. As long as the book still sells.”

She believes that underneath it all it’s an authentic, but neglected portrayal of how young women are choosing to live their lives. “A young female student at Glasgow University wrote to me to tell me that she’d written her dissertation on A Glasgow Kiss. She felt it represented a new form of feminism in Scotland and created a wave of our generation’s voices. I was really pleased as that’s the message I wanted to convey.

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“I love a good romcom, but they all get the guy in the end and he’s the right guy. That’s not how it happens. Plus, it’s about poking fun out of the whole business of sex and dating. These moments are never how they’re portrayed in the movies. It’s messy and awkward and often very funny.”

We talk about the stigma that still attaches to women using dating apps and having agency in their private lives. How many gifted and sharp women were expected to stay at home and sacrifice careers for rearing families because workplaces rarely granted them the opportunity to do both?

“I think my books are a rebuke to that. And it still happens now,” she says. “I’m 31 and a single mum and this is the best my life has been. I’ve genuinely no interest in dating. For the first time in my life I’m financially sound and my two children are doing well. I can largely do what I want. If someone came along whom I felt could add to that, then yes. But there’s no way I’m going to stop what I’m doing and go looking for so-called Mr Right.”

We meet in one of Glasgow’s boutique hotels where coffees come with unrequested glasses of water and the staff move as if on castors. She’s engaging and warm and possessed of a rapid-fire Glaswegian wit, but laced with self-deprecation lest anyone think she was getting above herself. She’s an experienced nurse in one of the West of Scotland’s busiest hospitals.

You’re left with the impression that if a prospective swain were to fancy his chances with her he’d need to be performing at the very top of his game.

We discuss why many men seem to be threatened by successful women and feel undermined if their prospective partners are more successful and earn more than them. It’s something that she and some of her friends continue to experience. “I don’t want to underplay my success just to accommodate someone else’s insecurities,” she says.

“I have friends who are doctors who tell me when they go on dating apps they don’t disclose their professions because it can deter men. Do you think it might be a type of impostor syndrome,” she asks me.

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“Maybe it’s a Scottish thing,” she says. “When I completed the first book I felt I couldn’t tell anyone until I knew that people actually liked it. In the middle of every book I’ve written I’ve thought ‘this is absolute shite’ and that’s when you need people around you to re-assure you. I don’t yet feel like an author. When people ask what I do, I still tell them I’m a nurse.”

There is though, a rewarding spin-off from her devotion to the NHS and her patients. It’s rooted in the verbal exchanges among her nursing colleagues which could strip paint from the walls.

“I have never experienced the patter of some of the girls I work with anywhere else. They are so sharp. The other day, one of our support workers, Wendy was telling us about bumping into an old flame in a shop. ‘Did you not stop and say ‘hiya’,’ asked her.

“’Stop and say hiya?’ - she impersonates her pal’s utter disdain - I wouldn’t gie that c*** a nod in the desert’.

“I was actually crying with laughter and knew I had to use it in the book. They keep you totally grounded. And what we do gives me some purpose in my life.”

There’s interest from the world of film and television (these books will move effortlessly onto the screen) but can’t yet discuss details. She’s hopeful though, that if they come to fruition they’ll show a side of Glasgow that gets shunned in modern literary and dramatic depictions of the city.

“You’ve got all these authors being edgy and doing their Glasgow Noir thing, where you’d think the city’s a dark, violent place, full of gangsters. But I like to write about all the cocktail bars and the restaurants in the city centre and how young people can have a great night out here. There’s a lot of glamour and sophistication in Glasgow, but we still tend to dwell on its dark underbelly.”

Such has been the success of these books that they’re moving into that territory marked ‘Literary Phenomenon’. In Glasgow’s Waterstone’s in the space of nine months What Happens in Dubai shifted nearly 3,000 copies. One of the managers told her that, even in the midst of Harry Potter fever, they never saw numbers like that.

There must come a time, I suggest, when she’ll finish with nursing for good. “In one way, it would make sense as I’d have more time to spend with my children. The shifts are crazy right now and hospitals are not currently the best places to work. But I love being a nurse. I love my patients and I love the area that I work in.

“I’ve cut down my hours a bit, but I would feel guilty about quitting nursing completely. My hospital is very short-staffed and I’ve been in my chosen area (renal) for a long time, which makes me one of the more senior nurses, so I feel I have a societal responsibility.

“Being an author is great, but nursing is in my blood.”