A nobody-knows-the-trouble-I've-seen, in this case, spelled naches, novel about Shirley Hartman who at first sight is about to take a high dive from her high rise apartment. She's the survivor of a Bronx motherless childhood which left her father in the willing hands of a housekeeper; as for Shirley, she's always done well moving quickly to the top of an advertising agency as a troubleshooter (landing the Ford car contract) even if her life has been relatively lonely except for her shrink and two friends. Until she meets Al Chunin, quixotic and evasive. In a drastic, rainy finale -- Shirley faces everything -- Al's hopelessly defective child by the wife who killed herself, her father's stroke, her own literal and figurative flipping out -- conveniently amended by the discovery that she has the flu and a fever of 103. Mr. Stein's The Magician was a better book -- this is offstaged melodrama with a commercial incentive.