Winter 1610, in the new Jamestown colony of Virginia, and the inhabitants are dropping like flies: bitterly cold, starving and diseased. One snowy night, under the cover of darkness, a desperate young servant girl rejects the inadequate protections of the fort, and flees into “the great and terrible wilderness”. The opening chapters of The Vaster Wilds, a new novel by the three-time National Book Award finalist Lauren Groff, unfurl at the frenzied pace of the very best escape narratives. Think Barry England’s 1968 novel Figures in a Landscape, but without the menacing helicopter – just a “sharp and slinking” soldier hot on the girl’s heels, wild animals, treacherous weather and terrain, and understandably unfriendly Native Americans. Women writing in this genre have traditionally been few and far between, as are female protagonists, which gives the novel the feel of something revelatory. Not that there isn’t precedent for the girl’s bid for freedom.…