Uglies

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Synopsis

Tally Youngblood lives in a world where all teens are told that they're ugly, but on their sixteenth birthday, they undergo an operation that makes them pretty. Tally is nearing her birthday and can't wait to join her friend, Peris, in New Pretty Town, where their only job will be to party and have fun. Unable to wait to see him, she sneaks into New Pretty Town and almost gets caught on her way back to Uglyville. She's saved by Shay, a girl she's never met before and who happens to share the same birthday. While waiting for their operations, Tally and Shay become the best of friends, but as their birthday gets closer, Shay tells Tally that she doesn't want to be pretty and introduces her to the world outside their city, telling her about a place called the Smoke where everyone gets to be themselves. Tally had always though the Smoke was a myth, but when Shay runs away, the authorities give Tally an ultimatum: Use the clues Shay left to find her friend and turn her in or never become pretty at all. Feeling she has no other option, Tally agrees, but when she finally finds Shay in the Smoke, she discovers a world that's different than she imagined, one that she gradually starts to like. She also learns that there's a far more sinister reason for the operations than merely putting everyone on equal footing to keep the peace. Tally chooses to stay, but when she accidentally sets off the homing beacon she was given, it could jeopardize the place she's begun to think of as her new home.

Review

Uglies is the first book in Scott Westerfeld's YA dystopian series of the same name. In this world, all young people are taught that they're ugly and are required to go through an extreme form of plastic surgery at the age of sixteen, which makes everyone look very similar. The supposed reason behind it is that making everyone basically the same has put people on equal footing, which has ended wars and conflicts so that they all now live peacefully. The purpose of all new pretties is simply to party and have fun, but later they'll undergo more surgeries as they move into middle pretty status where they take up jobs and have families.

Tally is nearing her sixteenth birthday, and like all uglies, she's sequestered in a dorm outside the city in Uglyville. All of her friends were older and have already been made pretty and are living in New Pretty Town. After sneaking into town to visit her best friend, Peris, Tally is having a hard time waiting for her birthday, but after she meets and befriends Shay her world starts to change. Shay talks of a place called the Smoke where no one has to go through the operation and she takes Tally out into the wilds where the ruins of old cities lie. Shay also tells Tally that she doesn't want to be pretty and that she plans to escape before her birthday. A mysterious guy named David, whom she's previously met, will take her to the Smoke when the time comes. Shay takes off just days before her birthday, but leaves Tally cryptic clues for how to find the Smoke. Tally is feeling a bit abandoned, but also looking forward to finally joining Peris. However, her plans are upended when agents from Special Circumstances take her from the hospital just before her scheduled surgery and tell her that they'll never give her the operation unless she becomes a spy and betrays Shay. Feeling like she doesn't have much choice in the matter, Tally reluctantly agrees. Armed with nothing but a homing device she's supposed to activate upon finding the Smoke and a hoverboard and enough survival supplies to last two weeks, she sets out in search of the fabled land where uglies reign. Upon finally finding the settlement and meeting the mysterious David, she feels guilty about turning them in and decides to see what it's all about first. The more time she spends there, the more she starts to see that she'd not only be betraying Shay, but also taking away the only home that David and the others have. When she meets David's parents, she also discovers the dark secret about the operation that no one wants uglies to know and that makes her realize that she can never go back. But when she accidentally activates the homing beacon, she may destroy the lives of, not only her friend and the boy she's come to love, but everyone who calls the Smoke home.

The entire book is told from Tally's third-person POV. She's the product of her environment, a girl who has been told all her life that she's ugly and needs an operation to make her like everyone else. As a result, she's quite eager to be made pretty, and although she's heard rumors about the Smoke, it's never even crossed her mind to want to go there. She and her friend Peris used to get up to all kinds of ugly adventures before he was made pretty, and now all she wants is to join him and her other friends in New Pretty Town. However, meeting Shay makes her realize there could be another world out there that she doesn't know about. Tally still wants to be made pretty, though, and has no real intention of accompanying Shay to the Smoke, but she keeps the directions Shay left just in case. When the Specials blackmail her into going to the wilds in search of her friend, Tally proves to be more adept at deciphering the clues and surviving in the wilderness than she thought she would be, showing that she's both smart and strong. She thinks she's just going on a mission to bring Shay back, but when she arrives in the Smoke and starts to meet the people there and live day-to-day with them, it begins to change her outlook. She doesn't want to destroy their home, which also showed her to be compassionate, and when things go sideways, she steps up to try to make it right again. I was perhaps a little disappointed in her for lying so many times, not only to Shay, but also to David and the others who'd become her friends. In the end, though, she tried to do the right thing even though it accidentally led to the very outcome she was trying to avoid. However, I reluctantly admit that without things playing out the way they did, the ending wouldn't have had the proper setup. It also would have been nice if the development of Tally's feelings for David, as well as her changing her mind about being pretty and her newfound appreciation for the Smoke would have been explored a little more deeply.

There wasn't really anything I found in Uglies that would make it inappropriate for its YA audience. The biggest thing that might be of concern is the idea of teenagers undergoing extreme plastic surgery, but since the procedure is painted in a generally negative light, I'd hope that younger readers would view the story as a warning against it rather than in any way promoting it. However, I could see how it might potentially affect kids if they already have body image issues, so I'd caution readers to understand that going into it. Otherwise, there's isn't much of note. A character is seen inebriated. When Tally visits New Pretty Town, the pretties are partying it up in a variety of ways, including drinking alcohol and the implication of some hanky-panky going on in the pleasure gardens, but there's nothing overt or detailed. When the Specials invade the Smoke, some people are hurt and at least one is found dead by Tally. Later there's mention of another character dying, but it's merely told, not shown. Tally and David kiss a few times, but it's very chaste and brief. I don't even recall any bad language being used. So overall, I'd say that the book is fully appropriate for the teens at which it's aimed.

After reading The Hunger Games years ago, I discovered a taste for dystopian stories, but unfortunately since I loved that series, all others since have been held up to it for scrutiny. Uglies came out somewhere in between. It was better than some books I've read in the genre, but definitely didn't quite live up to The Hunger Games for me. The story starts out a bit slowly as we meet Tally and learn about the world she lives in. It's not until she makes it to the Smoke and learns the truth behind the surgery that things started to pick up for me. I felt like the world of the uglies/pretties could have been fleshed out a little more fully. We're only given the barest amount of information about the people who came before them, known as the Rusties, and about how they came up with the idea of giving people the operation. The story also focuses rather narrowly on Tally's journey and we only see the other characters through her eyes. Unfortunately I felt like this left most of the supporting characters rather two-dimensional. Shay is probably done the best, because we get to learn about why she doesn't want the operation and her forays into the wilds where she met David and found out about the Smoke. I didn't really feel like I got to know the other characters very well, though, not even David. We do learn a bit of his and his parents' backstories, but I couldn't help feeling like it needed a little more detail. I also thought that David's characterization could have gone much deeper, too. He's clearly in some sort of relationship with Shay when Tally arrives, but he breaks up with her seemingly overnight with no real explanation as to what he see in Tally that makes him want to be with her instead, nor any indication of why he trusts her so quickly with his deepest secrets. While what's actually being done to people is terrible, I didn't feel a huge sense of urgency toward dismantling this messed up society either. However, despite my criticisms, I did like Uglies, and given that it ends on a somewhat cliff-hanger-y note with much left to be resolved, I found myself turning the last page with a certain curiosity about what happens next. Therefore I gave it four stars and plan to continue with the series. I also just found out that the movie version was just released on Netflix, so I'll be checking that out, too.

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Scott Westerfeld