Uglies characters

Appears from the start

A fifteen-year-old ugly living in the city's dormitories, counting down to her sixteenth birthday and the operation that will make her pretty and move her across the river into New Pretty Town. Impatient, impulsive and practised at sneaking out at night, she has just been left behind by her oldest friend, who turned pretty three months ahead of her. She takes it for granted that being ugly is a temporary and unbearable condition and that everything worth having waits on the other side of the surgery.

Appears from the start

Tally's oldest friend, three months older than her, who has already had the operation and now lives among the new pretties. The two of them once swore to be best friends forever and marked the promise with matching scars on their hands. When Tally sneaks across the river to find him, he is polite but embarrassed by her ugly face and by the risk she is taking, and he asks her to wait quietly for her own turn.

First appears in chapter 3

An ugly with exactly the same birthday as Tally, who becomes her closest friend in the last months before the operation. Confident and reckless, she is an expert hoverboard rider who knows tricks and routes Tally has never tried, and she is openly unimpressed by the face-designing software the other uglies play with. She has her own reasons for doubting that turning pretty is the obvious thing to want.

First appears in chapter 11

One of Shay's older ugly friends, part of the group she rides and pulls tricks with. He is wary of Tally and unwilling to say much in front of her about the plans he and the others are making before their birthdays come around.

First appears in chapter 13

The senior figure at Special Circumstances, a division of the city government most uglies assume is only a rumour. She is a cruel pretty: her surgery has made her sharp, predatory and frightening rather than warm. She questions Tally about her missing friend and makes it plain that Tally's own operation now depends on cooperating.

First appears in chapter 14

Tally's mother, a middle pretty living in a quiet suburb with Tally's father, Sol. Comfortable and untroubled, she has little patience for her daughter's restlessness and treats the coming operation as the answer to everything Tally is unhappy about.

First appears in chapter 26

A young man born outside the cities who has never had any surgery. He acts as a guide and recruiter for the runaway settlement, meeting uglies out at the ruins and leading those who choose to leave into the wild. Practical, quietly capable and used to living without city technology, he is curious about Tally and unusually willing to trust her.

First appears in chapter 27

An older runaway who keeps the settlement's collection of salvaged magazines and books from the Rusty era and guards it jealously. He treats the fragile old pages as the community's most valuable possession and is quick to scold anyone careless with them.

First appears in chapter 30

A former city surgeon who left with her husband to live among the runaways, and David's mother. Careful, exacting and slow to trust newcomers, she is the reason the settlement understands what the pretty operation actually does to the people who undergo it, and she treats that knowledge as something to be handled responsibly rather than shouted about.

First appears in chapter 30

A former city doctor, David's father and Maddy's husband. He shared the medical work that led the two of them to conclusions the city would never have permitted, and he is the one who explains to Tally what they found.