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Yesterday, Emma Straub’s excellent debut novel Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures waltzed onto bookshelves everywhere. We loved the book, which follows a young girl’s rise to stardom in Old Hollywood, as she transforms from a sunny country bumpkin to a savvy brunette bombshell to something else entirely. Inspired by the novel, which is full of many transformations, both literal and somewhat more metaphorical, we’ve put together a few of our favorite makeovers in literature — from the kind achieved with a little spit and polish to the sort that requires a vast internal sea change. Click through to see which we picked, and let us know if we missed your favorite in the comments.

Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw

The non-English majors among you may know this play better in one of its more modern incarnations: My Fair Lady and She’s All That, among others (though of course the play itself is based on the Pygmalion myth, in which Pygmalion falls in love with a sculpture of his own making). But Shaw’s play, meant as commentary on the British class system in the early 1900s, is the original story of renowned linguist Henry Higgins, who bets his friend that he can turn a Cockney street rat into a charming lady. He succeeds, of course, but (unlike in any of the film adaptations) he does not fall in love with her. How refreshing.