The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Mandel, Emily St. John. The Glass Hotel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2020.

The novel opens with one of the protagonists, Vincent, floating in the ocean, having just gone overboard from a ship. She thinks about her brother Paul and imagines she can see him, standing in a doorway.

In 1999, Paul is attending the University of Toronto after having been in and out of rehab for a heroin addiction in his teen years. He goes to a nightclub one night and meets a band. He is attracted to the lead singer, and when he sees the band again at another club, he offers them ecstasy he has in his pocket. Later that night, one of the band members overdoses. Feeling responsible for the death, Paul flees to his half-sister Vincent's apartment in Vancouver. He remembers when she was 13 and her mother disappeared after taking a canoe out on the water in Caiette, Vincent's hometown, located on the far end of Vancouver Island. While out with Vincent and her friend, Paul believes he sees the ghost of the man who died after taking the ecstasy.

In 2005, Vincent and Paul are both working at the remote Hotel Caiette when someone writes “Why don't you swallow broken glass” (32) on the window in marker. A guest named Leon Prevant, who works in shipping, is disturbed by this. The hotel manager, Walter, places a plant in front of the graffiti to hide it from Jonathan Alkaitis, the owner of the hotel who is set to arrive that night. Walter suspects Paul has written it and he fires him.

Jonathan (who is 58) meets Vincent (who is 24) at the hotel and asks her to move back to Connecticut with him and pose as his wife. He wants a companion but he does not wish to marry, as his first wife, Suzanne, died of cancer. Jonathan is a wealthy investor and Vincent spends her days shopping in Manhattan and her nights entertaining Jonathan's clients. She feels a pervasive sense of inauthenticity around everyone except her friend Mirella, who also came from modest means and married into money. Jonathan tells Vincent that a woman named Ella Kaspersky is harassing him, that she believes his promised returns on investments are fraudulent and that she filed a complaint with the SEC. Nothing came of the complaint. One night, Vincent looks up the Brooklyn Academy of Music's website. She sees a picture of Paul, who is performing there. She attends a performance and sees that he is using video art that she made back in Caiette, passing it off as his own.

One of Jonathan's friends and clients is a woman named Olivia Collins. She was once a painter and knew Jonathan's brother Lucas, who died of a heroin overdose. When she sold a painting for $200,000, her sister put her in touch with Jonathan and she invested all of the money with him.

In 2008, Jonathan is arrested and sentenced to 170 years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme. All of his investors, including Olivia and Leon Prevant lose everything. His daughter, Claire, turned him in to the FBI. While in prison, Jonathan begins seeing the ghosts of investors he betrayed. His co-workers are investigated and arrested as well, except for one, who flees the country. Jonathan imagines he also fled the country and pictures a “counterlife” (109) in which he is living in Dubai. He is seen by a doctor because he is having issues with his memory and it is clear after the appointment that he is suffering from the early stages of dementia. Jonathan sees Olivia's ghost in the commissary and later learns that she has died. He recalls having dinner with his first wife, Suzanne, during which they ran into Ella Kaspersky. A waiter had broken a glass on the table and Suzanne put a piece of the glass into Ella's drink and said, “Oh, Ella...Why don't you swallow broken glass” (231).

In 2013, Mirella comes into the bar where Vincent is working and pretends not to know her. Distressed by this, Vincent decides to leave New York and gets a job working as a cook on a shipping vessel, the Neptune Cumberland, where she meets a man she will go on to have a romantic relationship with, Geoffrey Bell.

After losing their savings, Leon Prevant and his wife drive across the country in an RV, working odd jobs. In 2018, Leon gets a call from his old shipping company, from which he had been laid off years earlier. They ask if he will consult on an investigation into a woman who went overboard from one of their ships. When he and the other investigator arrive on the Neptune Cumberland, the captain tells them that Vincent's boyfriend, Geoffrey, had hit a woman once before. On the way home, the other investor asks Leon not to mention this to their boss, promising him further consulting work if he agrees. Leon complies, but no further work ever comes.

The novel flashes back to 2005 to show Ella Kaspersky hiring Paul to write the graffiti on the window of the Hotel Caiette. In 2008, the hotel was meant to be sold, but there were no buyers, so Walter agreed to stay on as caretaker and did so for decades. In 2018, Paul is in Edinburgh. He is a successful musician, but he is consumed with guilt for having used Vincent's videos and never apologizing. He is also addicted to heroin again. He stumbles outside of a bar after getting high in the bathroom and believes he sees Vincent across the street. This is the moment of her death. The novel ends with Vincent in the ocean again. She sees Paul, who finally apologizes. She then sees her mother and says her name. Her mother looks up.