This Side of Paradise is the debut novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The novel centers on Amory Blaine, a young Midwesterner who, convinced that he has an exceptionally promising future, attends boarding school and later Princeton University. He leaves behind his eccentric mother Beatrice and befriends a close friend of hers, Monsignor Darcy. While at Princeton he goes back to Minneapolis where he re-encounters Isabelle Borge, a young lady whom he met as a little boy and starts a romantic relationship with her, but after a few days he becomes disillusioned by her and returns to Princeton.