A vivid love letter to the 1980s and one woman’s struggle to overcome the challenges of immigration. It’s 1986, and Muna Heddad is in a bind. She and her son have moved to Montreal, leaving behind a civil war filled with bad memories in Lebanon. She had plans to find work as a French teacher, but no one in Quebec trusts her to teach the language. She needs to start making money, and fast. The only work Muna can find is at a weight-loss center as a hotline operator. All day, she takes calls from people responding to ads seen in magazines or on TV. On the phone, she’s Mona, and she’s quite good at listening. These strangers all have so much to say once someone shows interest in them—marriages gone bad, parents dying, isolation, personal inadequacies. Even as her daily life in Canada is filled with invisible barriers at every turn, at the office Muna is privy to her clients’ deepest secrets. Dimitri Nasrallah has written a vivid elegy to the 1980s, the years he first moved to Canada, bringing the era’s systemic challenges into the current moment through this deeply endearing portrait of struggle, perseverance, and bonding. “Spectacular...Few novels have captured with such quiet, precise subtlety the interplay between isolation and connection that so often dominates the life of a new immigrant...Nasrallah is one of my favorite writers working today, an exceptional talent who deserves to be much more widely read.” —Omar El Akkad, author of What Strange Paradise and American War “A heartwarming story...It’s the interiority of the mother that really makes the novel shine...We so often ascribe masculine qualities to bravery and survival. The courage it takes to build a simple life as a single mother all alone in a new world, is revealed to be delicate and feminine and caring and sweet.” —Heather O’Neill, author of When We Lost Out Heads Dimitri Nasrallah is the author of four novels, including Hotline, a Canadian bestseller that was long-listed for the 2022 Giller Prize and was a 2023 finalist for Canada Reads. Nasrallah was born in Lebanon in 1977, during the country’s civil war, and moved to Canada in 1988. His previous books include The Bleeds (2018); Niko (2011), which won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction; and Blackbodying (2005), which won Quebec’s McAuslan First Book Prize. His books have also been nominated for the Dublin Literary Award and the Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal. Nasrallah lives in Montreal, where he is the editor of Esplanade Books and teaches creative writing at Concordia University. no experience necessary At five minutes to two, I check my face in the mirrored walls of the building’s lobby, straighten my blazer, touch up my lipstick, and then board the elevator to the sixth floor. I’ve been through this process many times now. I’m always hopeful that this time will turn out differently. Inshallah! I’m already finding things to like about this building: the lobby is bright and well kept; there’s a security desk to keep all the abu reihas from doing drugs in the public wash- rooms; even the elevator is a good size. I know myself. I grow attached to little touches like this too fast, and I begin to imagine myself anywhere and everywhere in an effort to will the world to bend my way for once. I’m a dreamer. My mother always said so. The elevator doors open at the sixth floor, where a promising white lobby and relatively clean carpeting greet me. Someone has thought to empty out the large ashtray garbage can by the elevator so it’s not the first smell to backhand you when the doors slide open. Along the wall to the right is one of those modern-looking glass doors, and stencilled across it in neon-red letters is the name NUTRI-FORT. I step inside and announce myself to the bored receptionist. “Muna Heddad,” I say. “Here for the information session. We spoke earlier.” She rolls her eyes, checks her list, and then points to a room down the hall. “Follow the signs for Information Session and wait with the others. Help yourself to the free coffee.” I hope she doesn’t notice my eyebrows perk up at the mention of free coffee. I find that impressive. At the end of the hall, I step into a conference room with windows facing out over the north end of the city. There’s a long, wide table with a screen on one end and a dozen other people seated around it, waiting for the session to start. I drift toward the coffee station and mechanically fill a paper cup, then find a seat along the windowed side of the room. From up here, you can see the McGill University campus, and the mansions along Docteur-Penfield and des Pins, and then Mount Royal. As I wait for the meeting to begin, I try to find my home: there it is, the tall apartment building just outside the campus gates along University Street, the only place that would rent a furnished apartment to a single mother, an immigrant with no references. A tall, sharply dressed blonde walks into the room and claims the end of the table with the