Everyone's got a Bono story. Or failing that, a Bono novel. In the past couple of years three books, two fiction and one non-fiction, have been written about the U2 singer and the latest, a novel by French author Jean Grégor entitled L'ami de Bono (the friend of Bono), is the most intriguing of the lot, writes Róisín Ingle

The author arrived in Dublin last Thursday after cycling across France and England, taking the boat into Dublin Port. It took him almost two weeks to travel from his home near Paris. His bicycle trip was a kind of pilgrimage to honour the journey made by the central character in what is Grégor's sixth novel.

The unfortunate Dany Danne - he goes into a kind of seizure every time he hears With Or Without You, a song he listens to quite a lot - makes the trip from Paris to Dublin by foot (as far as possible) over three months, despite a limp. The journey to find Bono becomes a journey to find himself and make some kind of sense of his messed-up life.

When he eventually catches up with Bono, Dany gives the U2 singer a run-down of his troubled life and offers his tuppence worth on the significance of every song on the Joshua Tree album. Instead of calling security, Bono takes him for a pint and tells him that yes indeed, he is a friend of Bono. For life. (We aren't told where this encounter takes place but our guess is the Clarence.)

Grégor is sipping beer in the Forty Foot bar in Dún Laoghaire. His bike, complete with panniers, is locked outside, and he is wearing black cycling leggings. He is a dark-eyed and earnest 36-year-old, his words tumbling out in very good English as he explains why he wrote a novel about one man's obsession with Bono.

While the U2 singer wasn't available to meet him on his visit, Grégor's inscription on the copy of the book he left for him says it all: "I came over from Paris to Dublin with my bicycle just to give you a signed copy of this book," he wrote. "The writer is always a bit of his characters and, yes, like one guy in this novel I have a 'feeling of friendship' for you and I had to get rid of buses, cars and planes to give a sense to my trip. Many of my age see you as a friend and that why maybe you 'mean' really something to my generation. With all sincerity and respect, amité, Jean Grégor."

The book is not just about the Bono-obsessed Dany Danne, although he makes up a good part of the story. The novel also follows the lives of a group of thirtysomethings who were in the same year in school. "In your teenage years, listening to bands like Supertramp, The Police and of course U2 was a kind of escape," he says. "Then you grow up and, compared to what you got from the music, life can be something of a disappointment. That was the idea of the book: to look at that disappointment. Bono was emblematic of something for a lot of people.

"I'm not a fan," he continues, anxious not to be labelled a stalker. "I don't go to the concerts, I don't rush out and buy a new albums immediately. I just like the music very much and, like my character, I have a little bit of this feeling of friendship for him, just like a lot of people of my generation do."

While Dany Danne walks to Dublin in the book, Gregor was reluctant to do the same - mainly because he has two children and a pregnant wife who might object to him disappearing for weeks on end to present his book to Bono.

"So I couldn't walk but I chose the bicycle because it was still in keeping with the spirit of the book," he says. "I got caught in awful weather, terrible snow and rain, and at times I did wonder what I was doing it for. But it was a kind of compulsion. I had to do it."

Gregor's other novels contain, among other oddities, characters with no heads and a boy who is made up of fridge components; so in some ways the plot of L'ami de Bono is quite bland for this writer who regularly delves into obsession.

What is it about Bono that he admires? "I like the way he behaves, the way he does things. I like how he is interested in excess, how his outrage is always so pronounced. In his 20s he took himself very seriously and he had this naiveté. But I like the way he can laugh at himself."

What about the cynicism surrounding the U2 frontman and the routine lambasting of "St Bono"?

"I know about that, but I think it is important to have people like him around," he replies. "I hate the silence of some artists . . . people who say nothing because it might cause offence. I appreciate his militancy about things. My only response to the cynicism is this book I have written. When you have a friend, you have a friend."

L'ami de Bono is published by Mercure de France, and available only in French