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Meet Tally Youngblood. She’s one of the Uglies.

Tally Youngblood is almost 16 and desperately awaiting the operation which will turn her from an Ugly into a stunning Pretty.

Tally lives in the city, in Uglyville – where all Uglies must live. Once she has the operation to make her pretty,  she’ll be able to move across the river into New Pretty Town and join her best friend, Peris. It’s all she’s ever wanted.

That is, until she meets the rebellious Shay. Shay is the same age as Tally and befriends her at once. Convincing Tally to sneak out of Uglyville one night, Shay takes her beyond the city to the Rusty Ruins, an old city of rubble representing humanity’s violent and wasteful past.

In the Rusty Ruins, Shay reveals that there are people living beyond the city, without the operation that everyone undergoes when they’re sixteen. Shay wants to join them and live free.

Tally refuses, but when Shay runs away a few days before her sixteenth birthday, the cold, cruel and secretive Specials (think CIA) kidnap Tally and give her an ultimatum: find Shay and the rebels, or remain an Ugly forever.

With little choice, Tally is sent out into the wilderness beyond the city to find Shay and the other rebels of ‘The Smoke’ and lead the Specials to them.

Yet, both Tally and the Specials get more than they ever bargained for. For Tally, loyalty, commonsense and community may prove stronger than her desire to become Pretty -and equally might threaten the lives of her newfound friends.

Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies is young adult fiction at its best.

The Uglies Series (which currently stands at 4 books) is both a gripping action adventure and an insightful commentary on our cultural obsession with body image and human perfection. It was these themes – and Westerfeld’s masterful handling of them- which made Uglies such a rewarding read for me.

To give you some idea of what I’m talking about, here is Tally encountering her best friend Peris for the first time after his operation to become a Pretty:

There was a certain kind of beauty, a prettiness that everyone could see. Big eyes and full lips like a kid’s; smooth, clear skin; symmetrical features; and a thousand other little clues. Somewhere in the backs of their minds, people were always looking for these markers. No one could help seeing them, no matter how they were brought up. A million years of evolution had made it part of the human brain.

Westerfeld’s exploration of this ‘prettiness’, surgically created around certain ‘universal ideals’ in what sounds like a gruesome, bone-grinding operation, is evident in every page of the book. The Pretties are not born, they are created. They’re kept docile and happy via surgical brain lesions.

Of course, the very notion of universal beauty is one that anthropologists (I knew we had some purpose other than making interesting dinner party guests!) have long ago debunked. Go to North Africa and a beautiful woman is one with a HUGE bum. Ask Central Australian Aboriginal people, and a beautiful woman is one with long hair and full breasts.

You get the picture… Apart from a general preference for facial symmetry and -wait for it- large irises- human notions of beauty are anything but universal.

Yet in Tally’s world, you can choose how you want to look after the operation -based on universally agreed notions of beauty. These, apart from symmetry, sadly seem to be those of present in contemporary western culture: the trout pout is definitely in along with large Caucasian eyes, tallness and a ‘healthy’ slimness that Westerfeld is careful not to portray as stick-thin.

Personality-wise, the new Pretties seem remarkably like Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie in The Simple Life –they’re little more very stupid, very unattractive, vapid party animals.

Thus, it’s hard not to see the immediate parallels between women’s magazines, the fashion and marketing industries and their penchant for airbrushed, impossibly ‘perfect’ humans and the modified humans in the Uglies Series.

Think of the Dove commercial and the transformation the young model undergoes, and you’re on the right track.

Whilst this might sound irritating or even repulsive to many, Westerfeld captures you in Tally’s world immediately, from her impatience to become Pretty, her quest to find Shay, and her desperation to undo the harm she inadvertently does to the people of The Smoke, Tally’s world is believable and utterly convincing.

Character development Uglies Covers up an otherwise predictable plot.

Uglies is a book with few surprises. If you’re expecting a revelatory plot or incredible prose, you won’t find it here. As soon as Shay, the Rusty Ruins and the hint of a mysterious free stranger called David are introduced, you almost know what the plot will be.

However, this isn’t the problem you might expect.

Instead, the development of Tally’s character, along with the dystopic setting, and the subtle commentary on image-obsession in our own society make up for the paucity of plot.

Tally changes – from image-obsessed teen, to self-serving traitor, to enlightened crusader throughout the course of Uglies. Perhaps this, too, is predictable, but it’s well executed so you don’t mind being taken along for the ride. Tally herself is a character I expect many people can identify with.

Uglies is written in third person, in a style that favours action and dialogue over description. Westerfeld writes just enough description to satisfy and describe the scene, then moves on. The novel is character and plot driven –and it is written with a YA audience in mind- so don’t expect literary prose or dense, long paragraphs.

If you’re interested in exploring society’s obsession with image, you’ll love this book. And, if you enjoy dystopic novels, you’ll also enjoy Uglies. Whilst it’s nothing outstanding in terms of plot or writing style, it is worth a read.

I’m looking forward to getting my hands on Pretties, the next installment of the series soon.

Author: Scott Westerfeld
Paperback: 425 pages
Publisher: Simon Pulse (Simon & Schuster)
Published: 2005
Genre: Young Adult

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