Baltimore born, forged tough in the acid mania of 60s San Francisco, and dying as a seasoned New Yorker, Cookie Mueller would have been at home anywhere. Despite her rise from obscurity as a regular face in the Baltimore underground cinema scene – particularly as a favourite of legendary cult filmmaker John Waters – it is Mueller’s writing that immortalises her. Written as a collection of stories, articles and letters threaded by a tireless lust for life, Walking Through Clear Water In A Pool Painted Black is no straight narrative. The book adorns a patchy retelling of the writer’s life – which is at times as intense and disturbing as it is extraordinary – with vignettes of the mysterious, shady and brilliant characters she surrounds herself with. Start with the man who drags himself from his deathbed by drinking his own urine and know that it only gets weirder. Mueller’s prose at times walks the line between barely-believable and straight up drug-induced ridiculousness, but her voice remains both genuine and beautifully insightful. Perhaps as one becomes from a life lived on the edge. My one piece of advice for this book: take Mueller’s medical advice with a pinch of salt. A beautiful storyteller, undeniably. A qualified doctor, possibly not.

TL