Book: Uglies
Author: Scott Westerfield
Pages: 488
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Reviewed by: Various
Amazon.com Price: $8.99
Purchase: Here
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The story is told through the eyes of Tally Youngblood, a 15 year old girl who can’t wait to turn 16. But this is not like any other teenage book, because in this story where people are sent away before their 16th birthday to a place that enhances their beauty and gets rid of flaws and makes people ‘pretty’. They must obey the authorities and go live with all the other pretty people in a new town far away.
It isn’t until Tally befriends a girl named Shay, who rebels against the authorities because she would rather stay herself, that the trouble really starts. She finds herself caught in the middle of a war about what is right and what is expected. The authorities give Tally a devastating choice; she can either stay with Shay and remain an ‘ugly’ or give Shay up.
Tally decides to escape to a secret village known as ‘The Smoke’. The town is a hideout for people who run away from the clutches of the corrupt government. She meets a boy named David, who reveals to her the sinister secret behind the authority’s way of becoming pretty and Tally decides that being made into a ‘pretty’ isn’t as appealing as it used to be. Realising her mistake, she tries to reverse the damage caused by helping to save the town.
In this futuristic tale, Scott Westerfeld artistically portrays how society believes that we all must live up to this idea of perfection. But the moral behind the story is that you don’t have to become someone else’s standard of physical beauty, and that you should be comfortable in your own skin.
Synopsis by Anna Masters
Review by Anon
Uglies was a delightfully ugly book(haha)!
If you enjoy science fiction, you will love this book!
The Characters: You love some, you hate some! Even though, it is quite a fantasy, you can still relate to a lot of the characters and their decisions. Some parts of this new world are very unrealistic and confusing and at times you make ask yourself, "How did that happen?!" But that is why you read books!
WOW Factor: 8/10 (one part is boring)
Review #2 by Amanda
Tally Youngblood has been looking forward to turning sixteen as long as she can remember—not because she can drive a car, but because that's the day she'll be made pretty. Tally lives in a society of the future in which everyone is deemed ugly until they are old enough to undergo a complete surgical makeover to give them the prettiest of physical features, the ones seen as universally attractive. Just before Tally turns sixteen though, she meets Shay, and Shay teaches her about the possibility of life beyond what they know. When Shay runs away to find people living in the uncivilized world, Tally is given a choice: find Shay and bring her back, or never have the operation to make her pretty. Unable to think of anything worse than remaining ugly for the rest of her life, Tally agrees, but her mission is much harder than she ever dreams it could be.
I love novels set in the future. I find them so interesting. There's something intriguing about trying to figure out what aspects of our culture today will still be around for generations to come. Westerfeld takes facts that have been examined for a long time by social psychologists (childlike facial features, average weight, and smooth skin are preferable when measuring attraction) and uses them to create a framework for his new world. Children are taught that they are all ugly, that their features aren't symmetrical enough, that their weight isn't in the right range, and that these physical differences are what caused all of the problems in the past. They believe that the key to maintaining order and peace is in everyone taking on average, innocent physical features when they reach a certain age. This eliminates jealousy, hatred, eating disorders, and ultimately, in their minds, wars of all kinds.
I think what I loved most about this novel was that, even in the future, teenagers are still teenagers. Tally and her friends live in dorms, go to class, and get into as much trouble as they can without causing enough trouble to keep them from being made pretty. It's nice to see that even in Westerfeld's fictional future, teenagers still question authority and try to push the limits as much as they can. Of course, because this is a fictional utopia, this also means that nothing is really as it seems, and maybe being pretty isn't really all it's cracked up to be. A large number of the people who know the truth are younger, and they work to convince the rebellious youth to leave everything they know behind. It wouldn't exactly be as easy to convince an adult, who had already undergone their cosmetic surgery, that the world wasn't what they thought.
I have to say, even though I enjoyed the story, I don't know if I really liked any of the characters. I didn't dislike them, but I didn't find myself rooting for them either. I just passively read their story. But because this is the first novel in a set, there is more story to come, and more time to get to know the characters. And, not only because I hate to not know how something ends once I've started it, but also because of how interesting I found the idea for the novel, I'll definitely be reading the remaining books in the set.