Product Description

An inordinately beautiful day surprises Chicagoland in July, 2003. No searing heat. No humid haze. Perfect. Real estate appraiser Conny Bromenn has recently turned 40, and the new fresh breeze has pumped him with a magnum of lucidity, though it struggles sometimes to sift through the gauze of befuddlement compiled over 40 years.

Conny’s ready for a serious change. He needs to confront his long-standing lethargy in the community and search for deeper meaning in his life—but can he let his golf buddies know his intentions without being laughed off the course? His newfound clarity tells him … maybe.

Risking their friendship, Conny proposes a new wager to replace their long-standing $5 Nassau, one in which the losers must adhere to certain pacts. Intended to initiate some sense of social responsibility within this group of 40-year-olds, these pacts quickly take on a life of their own with each passing hole.

Conny and his friends start out just hoping to get a tee time in this unexpected weather, but end up turning a funhouse mirror on suburbia, their places in it, and what needs to be done …

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #758799 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 201 pages

About the Author
Joe Redden Tigan has had poetry published in The High Plains Literary Review and other literary journals. This is his first novel. He once caddied in the Western Open, one of golf’s oldest and most prestigious tournaments.

Customer Reviews

An involving novel about an awakening sense of social responsibility, highly recommended.
Waggle is a novel written by golf lover Joe Redden Tigan, for fellow golf lovers and suburbanites everywhere. One ordinary day in the summer of 2003, real estate appraiser Conny Bromenn decides to inject some change and meaning into the self-absorbed life he shares with his community. He decides to motivate his Saturday morning golf foursome by replacing their usual wager per hole with certain "pacts" that the loser pledges to adhere to. Hole by hole, the group of 40-year-olds is forced to reexamine their place in the world, and what they need to do. An involving novel about an awakening sense of social responsibility, highly recommended.

you gotta waggle
Can four golfing buddies save suburbia? In this often hilarious, often surprisingly sensitive search for the meaning of life, they just might. While Waggle spends considerable time searching for a social conscience on a suburban golf course, Joe Redden Tigan's first novel is not only a story about four men's (reluctant) white-collar search for self-fulfillment in the suburbs, it's also at parts a slightly demented guidebook on how certain golf bets are constructed and what is involved in the mechanics of many kinds of golf shots.

Waggle certainly alludes to the inevitable ennui of a listless suburban life, but that's not the main purpose of the book--to let things wallow in Pleasant-Valley-Sunday demographic oblivion. Waggle comes to the suburbs already understanding the inherent trappings of affluent complacency, having a history of it, but in search of a solution. As many solutions as possible, in fact. The real question here is not whether an unexamined (suburban) life is vacuous or not, but, if given several ways to lead a more meaningful life, would people take any at all.

makeminemink
Waggle is a pure delight with several laugh out loud moments. The golfing foursome of men who grew up with Star Wars (both Lucas and Reagan) involve themselves in a review of life as they find it in paved over Chicagoland via a series of pacts on a blissful July morning of golf. Conny Bromenn provides his friends and golf buddies with extra challenges on the course--not the usual gambling stakes. When he finds himself caught between a desire to raise The Masters to its awesome potential while clearing the Earth of corruption, and a desire as strong not to lose the game, we may think we are involved in intergalactic struggles. Well, maybe, it just depends on how much power you give Hootie Johnson, chairman emeritus of the Augusta National, and the Illinois State Highway Toll Authority. Will any of the four feel that personal sacrifice is worth it? Waggle is a walk through the course with these four and a well-paced, engaging telling of a tale by a wonderful storyteller.