Lavender-Smith's first book, From Old Notebooks, a cross-genre work combining elements of fiction, non-fiction, memoir, poetry and philosophy, was published in March 2010.

[3][4] Writing in Rain Taxi, literary critic and Harvard University professor Stephen Burt called From Old Notebooks "an anti-masterpiece of an anti-novel," noting novelist David Markson's influence on the book.

It is structured like poetry, in shifting events and tones without transition, though ... the language is ruthlessly prosaic.

"[6] Daniel Nester has referred to Lavender-Smith's From Old Notebooks, along with books by Jenny Boully, as combining "the best of the poetics of prose poetry with the I-centric essay," and counted Lavender-Smith and Boully as members of a "New Prose" movement in contemporary American literature.

[8] The novel consists of a monologue thought or spoken by a character floating in space, between two points of light or "stars.