Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

“Isn’t it good to make society full of beautiful people?” Yang Yuan, quoted in The New York Times.

In Scott Westerfeld’s epic, science fiction novel, Uglies, he creates a world where on your sixteenth birthday you enter a new lifestyle that only involves you to have a really great time, while being extremely pretty. Although beauty doesn’t come without a price, it might mean giving up who you truly are. So what would you rather: Prettiness or Persona?After years of feeling inadequate as an ‘ugly’, fifteen year-old Tally Youngblood is anxiously awaiting her sixteenth birthday. That is the day she will undergo an operation turning her from an ordinary ‘ugly’ into simulated, perfection. It is an everyday operation that every ‘ugly’ looks forward to on there sixteenth birthday, which releases you into the ecstasy of New Pretty Town, where you join other ‘pretties’. Well that’s what Tally thinks until she meets the rebellious ‘ugly’, Shay, who isn’t sure she wants to be ‘pretty’. Shay try’s to persuade Tally to run away with her to another world where no surgical treatment needs to change her real beauty and where she will be accepted, just being the ugly she truly is. Tally embarks on a vast adventure where she faces startling dangers, difficult obstacles, heart-breaking deceits, and how it feels to be ‘pretty’ on the inside. She confronts the whole other side of the ‘pretty’ world and co mes to realize that there is more to life than being ‘pretty’. In the end she must choose individuality, friendship and love or her dream of being a normal ‘pretty’. This revolutionary, science-fiction takes you into the future of the highly developed human race where beauty is the ordinary way of maturing, and everyone is made into the same, indistinguishable ‘pretty’. You view two diverse and conflicting worlds: Uglies and Pretties. The story demonstrates humanity’s obsession with youth and beauty and reminding us that individualism and personality is important. Also, teaching to value your inner self and that beauty is not just skin deep. Scott Westerfeld creates an exciting and daring futuristic novel that view’s the importance of self acceptance and explores the meaning of true beauty. It was simply a book that I could not put down! This easy to relate to novel gives it’s reader’s an all around electrifying look into Westerfeld’s fascinating outlook about the tentative advancement of humanity. The Uglies is the launching of an stirring series where Tally experiences an immense mixture of issues, uncultivated passions and spirited adventures.

Olivia, age 14, Ancaster Branch