Rebekah Dow

Sophomore Katie Leenders poses with The Uglies, a dystopian novel geared toward teenagers.

For its September meeting, Book Club read Uglies by Scott Westerfeld.

Uglies is a post-apocalyptic novel set in a time when our civilization (known as the “Rusties”) has been destroyed because of a bacterium that attacked petroleum. People in this futuristic society live in isolated and self-sufficient cities where, after age sixteen, everyone is basically the same. Why?

They all turn pretty. The Uglies (kids under sixteen) look forward to the day when they will have an operation erasing all of their flaws.

Tally Youngblood is a lonely almost-sixteen-year-old whose friends have already had the operation. She often sneaks out of her dorm to spy on New Pretty town, where all of the teenagers who have recently had the operation live. On one of these expeditions, she meets a girl named Shay.

Shay doesn’t want to have the operation. On one occasion, Shay says:

I’m sick of this city… I’m sick of the rules and boundaries. The last thing I want is to become some empty-headed new pretty, having one big party all day.

Tally doesn’t think much of her friend’s complaints until Shay decides to run away to the Smoke, a society in the woods where everybody is ugly. Tally stays, wanting to become pretty, but Shay gives her a piece of paper with coded directions in case Tally changes her mind.

Unfortunately, the directions get Tally in trouble with Special Circumstances, a group of people dedicated to keeping the cities peaceful and safe. They send Tally to find the Smoke, threating her with a life of being ugly if she doesn’t succeed. Tally, with a special tracking device, decides to go to the Smoke. There, she discovers the true costs of becoming pretty.

I’ve read this novel a couple of times, and I do recommend it, and the whole series. Uglies isn’t about the end of the world; it is a novel focused on what happens when the government (or whoever is in control) tries to create a perfect society. Uglies brings up questions about peace versus individuality and freedom of choice, and about how we as human beings feel about the way we look.

I can’t say that I absolutely love Uglies, but that might be because I’ve read it too many times and it just doesn’t surprise or interest me as much as it did when I was a bit younger. It is definitely an easy read, and one with enough action to hold the reader’s attention. Uglies is worth reading, even though it might be a little young for high school-aged people, both for plot and for its societal concepts and questions. If a post-apocalyptic, somewhat romantic, and pretty exciting novel sounds good to you, go for it. Read Uglies.