Pretties
2005
- fiction
- science fiction
- personal beauty
- brainwashing
- young adult fiction
- ficton
- brainwashing in fiction
- teenage girls
- juvenile fiction
- personal beauty in fiction
The story
Finally surgically transformed into a "pretty," sixteen-year-old Tally, now gorgeous and programmed to think only happy thoughts, is plagued by tangled memories of living in the Smoke, a rebel colony of "ugly" runaways hiding from the Special Circumstances authorities.
What it’s like
Pretties is a book of bright surfaces with something rotting underneath, and its prose keeps the two in tension. Scott Westerfeld writes in close, clipped third person, quick and bubbly in the sections where Tally is newly transformed, all sparkling parties, hoverboards, and cheerful shallow chatter, then gradually roughening as the old memories bleed through. The sensory world is glossy and sun-warmed: pastel city towers, lakes that shimmer, flawless faces in mirrors, set against the grit of a ruined, tangled wilderness. The mood is bright-eyed unease, a cheerful surface cracking open, with an undercurrent of creeping dread and occasional sharp moments of physical peril. The pacing is brisk and chapter-driven, with short sections and cliffhangers that make it easy to read in long stretches. Violence is present but not gory: brief fights, a few tense chases, and some scenes of injury and surgical discomfort handled without lingering detail, with no sexual content. The emotional register is wry, anxious, and hopeful, and the central arc follows a young woman slowly questioning the values she was raised to accept. It suits a long-haul flight, a weekend read, or anyone who wants a propulsive, lightly philosophical adventure for teen and adult readers alike.
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