THIS IS A cunning idea for a book, an ingenious literary conceit. Together, the six stories in Martin Waxman's Everything in Winnipeg Begins in a Car (Black Moss, 80 pages, $15.95 paper) combine to create the biography of a young man whom their author dubs "a nerdy Robert de Niro," one Paul Samuels of Winnipeg. Slightly sad and a little goofy all at once, the stories manage to merge nostalgia with low comedy and genuine sentiment with terrible automotive puns ("Paul was not a good fender"; "Drive is what he lacks.")

Samuels is conceived in a car; becomes an in utero member of a three-vehicle procession driving from Winnipeg to Minneapolis for a family wedding; makes the same trip over again at 14 and falls in love; has miserable dating experiences in cars until he thinks, "This car knows so much about me, it's embarrassing to be seen in it in public," and dies in a car accident at 35 after he's made the break with home by moving to Toronto.