This happens to me, too, on occasion. You might want to try an audio book version. This helps in a couple of ways. The narration might change narrator for different characters or change their voice and the name pronunciation is probably much better for languages one does not speak. This also gives you a basis for the character in your mind and frees up your imagination for the text not related to character voice and emotion. I still find some books with a larger number of characters or particularly different cultures/settings requiring multiple re listens at the start for me to be able to see what is described in my mind's eye, versus my brain being immediately receptive to other books from the beginning. It does require a certain amount of concentration to comprehend and not just hear like background music that is available when I am walking or riding a bicycle or cooking, sometimes when I am driving.