Byatt has great imagination but this novel in danger of running off the rails

So how much is going on in A.S. Byatt's "The Children's Book"? Well: Olive delivers a baby boy (Harry), child # 7?, as she begins serious flirtation with widowed Prosper Cain, partly in order to exact vengeance on husband Humphry who admimts to having an affair with a literary groupie, Marion, who is now pregnant - and in their "row" they let slip, and the children overhear, that not all of the children are his - so these affairs have been going on, though there's not much evidence of that in the way they behave as a frolicsome if eccentric clan. Meanwhile, Philip is learning the craft of pottery from B Fludd, while being seduced by young daughter Pomona (the names of the women in this book - is it Byatt or is it England?), and then his sister shows up totally bedraggled. Tom & Charles, cousins, studying for boarding school exams, as Charles, a weak student, is drawn by his tutor into a radical London political cell. All this in about 50 pp.! And that doesn't even take into account the long (and for me tedious) sections that delve into the craft and history of pottery and glazing nor the interpolated italicized passages from the children's book that Olive is writing. I've noted in previous posts that Byatt has a copious imagination, and that's all to the good - she gives you your money's worth in plot, character, vocabulary, hodgepodge of styles - but this book is seriously in danger of running off the rails. There are some great conflicts foreshadowed but the focus at this point is so broad that the whole picture has begun to look hazy.