SSR

Reading a book is a way of escaping to an adventure. In Scott Westerfeld’s novel “The Uglies,” I lived an adventure through Tally Youngblood’s eyes. The setting takes place in a futuristic isolated society where all citizens are separated into classes based on age. The highest, most exciting and interesting age group were those who just turned 16 on into their late twenties. When living in a city where you can never travel outside the city limits, Pretty town is where you want to be. This novel is told through the life of a lonely young “ugly.” Her friends have already turned sixteen while she waits anxiously until her birthday comes around to finally be promoted into the beautiful world of beautiful people. In Tally’s society, a rite of passage and tradition the city has is that once you become of age, you undergo surgery and become pretty. Basically, plastic surgery is what defines maturity, a teenager’s path on becoming an adult. Being an ugly, Tally has no authority, no voice, and no popularity. In order to be known amongst a town of common unappealing faces, you have to pull tricks. Tally was always scaring the incoming uglies, always messing with her interface ring to trick her room (which always had surveillance over where she went); her biggest trick was crossing over the river to Pretty town during an infamous beautiful teenage party that they hold almost every night. Months away from turning sixteen, Tally resorted to a strange outsider named Shay as a friend. Shay kept to herself seeing as how all of her friends had simultaneously disappeared, as the adults would call it. However, Shay’s sources say that they escaped. They grew to become best friends, Tally taught Shay tricks and in return Shay taught her. On the day before Tally was to turn sixteen and finally become pretty, Shay hover boarded to her window, a knapsack in hand draped from head to toe in black attire. She told shay she was running away, to find her friends in the smoke. The smoke was a rumored independent society where the uglies were never changed; they grew old the way they were supposed to. This was strange to Tally because it was all she has ever known; the goal in life was to become beautiful. Shay tried her hardest to convince Tally to go with her. Tally refused, longing to be reunited with her old friends back in Pretty town. Shay turned to her last resort; she had to tell Tally the truth, to save her. During pretty surgery, they put lesions in your brain to keep you from causing problems, so your head is empty, so that you couldn’t question everything. Tally slowly started to realize that this could be a possibility; her old friends weren’t acting like themselves. Basically, they were brain dead. I recommend this book because it’s full of action and portrays the way our superficial views appearances. It’s a reality check.