Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld

For my teen book club, I read Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld. To be honest, I felt like it was trying to be a futuristic dystopic societal commentary (think Soylent Green), but fell far short. The story is basically about a future society where, at the age of 16, everyone gets an operation to be pretty. The main character, Tally, joins her friend Shay in running away from "Uglyville" (imaginative name, right?). Westerfeld organizes the society in a way that is completely unrealistic. In the story, after Shay runs away from being pretty, Tally is prevented from having the operation by Special Circumstances, an organization of government officials. It has an air of being a "big brother" society, but it's like having only half a story - there is absolutely no motivation presented for Special Circumstances to WANT to run a society of made-mindless pretties. The pretties produce nothing and have nothing the government could possibly want. All they do is have parties. They also have not bothered to restrict access completely to the outside world. After Tally runs to the Smoke, a city of renegades run away from the society and hunted by SC, she meets David (of course she does) and falls in love (despite only knowing him for about a week. That totally happens.). The progression of Tally's relationship with David was laughably unrealistic. Another peeve about Tally's relationship with David - Westerfeld made them out to be perfect, which bothers me for whatever reason. Seeing as relationships aren't perfect, there's no point in trying to fabricate them as such. The second half of the book was better than the first, but the whole premise of the society was ridiculous and I couldn't take it seriously. This all being said, the book is a trilogy, and I will probably read the second book despite how much I disliked the first.

Overall: 4 out of 10.

Details:

Publisher: Perfection Learning (March 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 075697237X
ISBN-13: 978-0756972370