The Glass Hotel: Chapter 16: Vincent in the Ocean Summary & Analysis

In a series of fragments, Vincent describes her final moments on earth, instructing herself to “begin at the end,” with a depiction of her falling off the ship with her camera. She revises her previous statement, beginning “twenty minutes earlier,” instead, when she is sitting in her room onboard the Neptune Cumberland with Geoffrey Bell. It’s December 2018, and they’ve been a couple for years, though things aren’t perfect. Geoffrey has wanted to marry Vincent, but she refuses to be dependent on anyone ever again, and she never wants to return to land.

Tonight, in particular, there is tension between the two of them because Geoffrey is mad at Vincent for walking on deck during hazardous weather when the crew had been instructed to remain indoors until the storm subsided. Vincent broke the rules last night to go outside to film the sea. Geoffrey insists he’s not ordering her around to control her, but to protect her. Vincent accuses Geoffrey of “being melodramatic,” but he refuses to back down. They lay in bed and watch Vincent’s suitcase move back and forth across the room as the sea sways underneath the boat.

Suddenly, Vincent rises from the bed and walks onto the C deck and into the storm. She loves the feeling of the rain, the violent flashes of lightening. She walks to the blind spot corner of the C deck, turns on her camera, and records the storm. Vincent clutches the railing with one hand, but she lets go for a moment to steady the camera. Suddenly, she thinks she sees someone at the other end of the deck but realizes she must be alone, since she thought she saw a woman, and she’s the only woman on this ship.

But Vincent realizes she wasn’t mistaken: there is a woman there, illuminated with each flash of lightning. The figure is not fully human, more “a disturbance of the air” that appears and fades with each lightning strike. Suddenly, Olivia Collins is standing beside Vincent at the railing, though she’s “younger” and “less substantial” than she was the last time Vincent saw her. Vincent is still holding the camera over the ship’s railing. As Olivia turns to speak to Vincent, Vincent loses her grip on the camera, and it slips from her hands into the water. Vincent reaches for it, but she bends too far, loses control, and falls overboard, feeling “weightless” as she tumbles through the air into the water.

The narrative breaks down into more fragmented, surreal pieces as Vincent splashes into the “annihilating” cold of the water. She is a small child holding hands with her mother and gathering mushrooms in Caiette. Now she exists in “the moment before sleep,” in a state of subconsciousness, and then she is sputtering and drowning in the seawater. Olivia apologizes to Vincent, explaining that she was thinking of Vincent, of that time on the yacht with Jonathan, and suddenly she was standing beside her. Vincent describes the two of them as existing “in some in-between space.”

Vincent’s consciousness flashes back to her teenage graffiti: “sweep me up.” Next, she flashes to the moment when Geoffrey kissed her on the C deck and told her he loved her. She repeated the words back and meant them for the first time. Vincent moves forward in time, to the moment when Geoffrey leaves the ship at the Port of Rotterdam, despite Mendoza’s warning that it makes him look guilty. He looks “so alone and so bereft,” and Vincent wants to comfort him but cannot. 

Now, Vincent is in a hotel in Dubai. She sees Jonathan in the lobby and greets him. She tells him she’s “just visiting,” but doesn’t say from where, as she’s distracted by the sight of Faisal and Yvette Bertolli walking past the window. Vincent’s consciousness flashes much further into the future; she sees Paul sitting in the doorway in Edinburgh. Next, she sees Mirella sitting alone in a loft somewhere, but Mirella doesn’t see her.

Now, Vincent’s at Le Veau d’Or with Jonathan as he speaks to Lenny Xavier, one of her least favorite investors. Lenny makes his covert remark about the scheme of Jonathan’s company, and Vincent recognizes that she’d known then that something was off with Jonathan’s business, but that she’d “chosen not to understand.”

Vincent visits Paul once more, only this time he’s in the desert, standing outside smoking a cigarette. When he sees her he drops his cigarette, asking if she’s “really there.” Vincent tells him that she “[doesn’t] know how to answer either of those questions.” Paul tells her he was just speaking about her with his counselor. He looks like he’s been crying. He apologizes to her for everything, but Vincent comforts him, explaining that she “was a thief too,” that they “both got corrupted.” Paul doesn’t understand Vincent’s words, and suddenly she wants to be someplace else, so she journeys back to Caiette.

Now, Vincent is on a beach in Caiette. Her mother sits on a log in the distance as though she is waiting. She’s 36 years old. In this moment, Vincent knows her mother’s death was an accident: “of course it was, she would never have left me on purpose. She has waited so long for me. She was always here. This was always home.” Vincent calls her mother’s name, “and [her mother] looks up in amazement.”